


mbcock. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Lord Stirling's Stand, 



AND 



OTHER POEMS. 



BY 



W. H. BABCOCK. 







PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

LONDON: 16 SOUTHAMPTON ST., COVENT GARDEN. 
1880. 






f s 






^ 






Copyright, 1879, by W. H. Babcock. 



DEDICATED 

TO MY KIND FRIEND 

MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS, 

OF NEW YORK, 

WHO FIRST ENCOURAGED ME TO TRY MY PEN, AND 

WHOSE ADVICE AND INSTRUCTION HAVE 

GREATLY AIDED ME. 



PREFACE. 



This volume contains all the poems, which I think 
worthy of preservation, that I have ever written. Most 
of them now see the light for the first time, but some 
have appeared in different periodicals and newspapers. 
A few of these latter will doubtless be recognized by 
personal friends ; but with such exceptions the entire 
collection will be new to them as well as to the rest 
of the public. I have attached to each poem the date 
when it was written, so that all who may take any 
interest either in my writings or myself can readily 
compare the productions of different periods. To com- 
plete the record, I may add that my very first verses 
were written in the autumn of 1861, at the end of a 
copy of Drake's poem on The American Flag. There 
were just twelve lines in all, of which I give the final 

four: 

May no rebellion prosper, 

And may no secession stand 
Before our country's power 

And God's own avenging hand. 

The others were unmitigated doggerel. In the boyish 
pieces which begin with the sixth of my list, I have 

5 



6 PREFACE. 

made very few changes. With this explanation, I 
leave the volume to the reader, hoping that he or she 
may derive some pleasure and profit from its perusal, 
and be moved to good will toward its author. I wish 
to do some good where I cannot go, and to make some 
friends whom I may never see. Of course the latter 
consideration ought to yield to the former where they 
conflict ; but one would naturally prefer to unite both. 



CONTENTS. 











TAGE 


Lord Stirling's Stand . 9 


Bennington 












16 


Norman 












24 


A Christmas Letter 












41 


A Maryland Homestead 












47 


Christmas, 1863 












53 


Winter .... 












54 


Impromptu 












55 


Memory 












57 


The Grand Review 












58 


The Voices of the Wind 












59 


Sunset Visions 












61 


An Autumn Storm. 












64 


Snow-Flakes . 












66 


The Ambuscade 












68 


The Sunburst of Erin . 












7i 


Sabbath .... 












72 


The Temple of Air 












73 


Stanzas from " Eric" . 












74 


Arkadi .... 












S3 


The Night-Hawk . 












92 


The Undertone . ■ . 












93 


Jephthah the Outlaw . 












94 


Whither are we Drifting? 












• 97 


The Aztec Emperor 












. 100 


Midnight 












113 


The Mystic Message 












114 


A Poet's Burial 












ii5 


A Watchword for Cuba 












• "7 



8 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

The Butterfly's Mistake . . . . .119 

The Murderer's Reply . . . '. . .121 

The Fire-Fly 123 

The Chieftain of Camaguey . . . . . 124 

The Land of Spirits 127 

Hassan's Vision .128 

The Miner's Fate . . . .. . . . .132 

The Devil's Hole . 133 

The Maid of Galilee 135 

The Valley of the Shadow 137 

At Rest 143 

The Murmur of War . 144 

Day-Dreams 146 

Cuba 147 

The Banners of the Isle 148 

A Legend of Alexandria 150 

The Arctic Queen 152 

The Northern Palace 153 

Paris at Bay 154 

Las Tunas 156 

Spring's Treasury . . 165 

Love and Life . 166 

Border Ben .168 

The Ride of the Seventh Cavalry . . . .174 

Joseph the Nez Perce 179 

Rose 181 

The Isle of Kent 184 

The Problem 186 

Christabel 188 

The Plague-Flower ....... 201 

A Vision of To-Morrow 203 

The Cheyenne Massacre 206 

On Capitol Hill 209 

A Legend of the Alleghanies . . . . 210 



LORD STIRLING'S STAND. 

Over the swarming river, 

With its border of fretted piers, 

Mile after mile the city 

Its roofs and spires uprears, 

But never a shaft or column 

To mark the bitter day 
When the blood of heroes stained the sod, 

Fallen in hopeless fray. 

Ah, well ! the tide of progress 

Has ever both ebb and flow, 
And our gaining has been with losing 

Since an hundred years ago. 

Yet our losing has been with gaining, 

For all these busy hills 
Were then but barren woodlands, 

With an idle ripple of rills ; 

And all the ground below them 

Was meadow and creek and marsh, 

And over and over beyond them 
Were ridges ragged and harsh ; 

2 9 



io LORD STIRLING'S STAND. 

And, through those ridges, three passes 
Were guarded by night and day, 

For the army that shielded Manhattan 
On the heights of Brooklyn lay. 

The watchful trembling city 
Crouched on the flats below, 

And out on the blue sea-border 
Hovered the hawk-like foe. 

Thrice in the midnight watches 

The bivouac felt a thrill, 
A whisper out of the darkness, 

A spectral menace of ill ; 

But no man sought the phantom, 
And no man knew its' form, 

Till madly the August morning 
Rang with a double storm ; 

For, while the Hessian columns 
Straight at the defile came, 

Down on the rear Cornwallis 
Swept like a prairie flame. 

Then writhed the stricken army, 
Wrapped in the coilings fell, 

Till the woodland aisles and alleys 
Seemed the columned halls of Hell ; 

For the smoke of the rapid muskets 

Rose in a dismal veil, 
And out of the hidden struggle 

Came a constant clamor and wail, 



LORD STIRLING'S STAND. n 

Till at last the desperate remnant 

A backward pathway cleft 
Through the rushing crowds of foemen 

That clung to them right and left. 

Still by the bay Lord Stirling 

Manfully held his own ; 
Like a pine-tree grand in a storm-swept land, 

He clung to the ground alone. 

Three regiments obeyed him 

(Three States on their colors shine), 

And a single trim battalion, — 
The First of the Maryland line. 

Firm was the slender column, 

Firm as a lance in rest, 
For the gallant State had given 

Her noblest and her best. 

From Dorchester and Arundel 

Came the sons of the Puritan, 
And Catholics from St. Mary's, 

And Churchmen from old Queen Anne ; 

Came Calvert and Bowie and Paca, 

Goldsborough, Addison, 
Tilghman of Chester River, 

And Carroll of Carrollton ; 

Proud of their lineage stainless, 

Proud of their rural sway ; 
And the pride of Maryland held its own 

With a royal might that day. 



I2 LORD STIRLING'S STAND. 

Now from the woodland conflict, 

Nearer and yet more near, 
Broke many a cry of horror 

And many a British cheer ; 

And Stirling's brow grew anxious 
As he turned to the rearward bridge, 

And looked in vain for the summons 
From the earthwork on the ridge. 

In vain, till a mob of flying 

Hurried across his gaze, 
And, swift on their trail of panic, 

The bridge burst into blaze. 

Then Stirling sprang to action. 

" Back to the works !" cried he ; 
"Men of Maryland, hold the crest 

And guard the rear with me." 

The regiments turned, but lingered, 

Doubtful and loth to go ; 
He waved them on right lordly, 

And wheeled to meet the foe. 

And the Maryland lads wheeled with him, 
And he spake with a sudden thrill : 

" Will you do less than the Yankees? 
Give them a Bunker Hill." 

And he looked on the summer landscape, 
And he looked in the depth of sky; 

"There's little space between hill and marsh, 
But there's room enough to die." 



LORD STIRLING'S STAND. 

Briton and Continental 

Halted with startled stare, 
For the Maryland battalion 

Was facing two armies there. 

No need for the hope fanatic 
That thrilled the Vendean wars ! 

No need for Pallas Athene ! 
No need for mailed Mars ! 

In the simple pride of manhood 
They fronted the regulars then, 

To fight till the death for their noble State, 
And die like gentlemen. 

Grand as the young slaveholders 

Who filled the Trachian pass, 
And walled with their ringing bucklers 

The dead Leonidas ! 

Four times did Grant, pursuing, 

Break on that stubborn crest 
As clouds, by the wild wind driven, 

Break on the mountain's breast. 

Five times on Lord Cornwallis, 

Striving to pass the hill, 
They dashed like a bursting torrent, 

And bore him back to the mill. 

But ever their faces, turning, 

Sought the remoter shore 
And the marsh, all dotted with figures, 

Where man never crossed before ; 
2* 



13 



14 



LORD STIRLING'S STAND. 



Where many a heart of valor 

In the noisome quagmire sank, 
With the mottled pools above him 

And the reed-growth rustling rank. 

But ever denser and heavier 

Grew the foemen's constant press, 
And the Maryland men grew weaker 

And their numbers less and less. 

The balls came plunging through them, 

The musketry smote them down ; 
Half the battalion were lying 

On the hill-side bare and brown. 

But still in the scorching sunshine 

They fought a hopeless fight, 
With naught to aid but their lofty pride 

And the consciousness of right. 

Suddenly rose o'er the din of foes 

A voice like an organ-blast : 
" We have won the game through flood and flame ! 

Our men are over at last ! 

" Now !" — and the call was echoed 

By a hoarse exultant cry — 
" Now show the British yonder 

How Maryland men can die !" 

Over the hill they bounded 

With a lion-like rush and roar, 
The dead and dying behind them, 

The flag and Stirling before. 



LORD STIRLING'S STAND. 

Right at the British heartstrings 

So dire a swoop they made 
That the mighty mass was severed 

Like flesh by a plunging blade. 

Outward it rolled and backward 

Like a torrent-buffeted tide, 
And the rival banners wrestled 

For a moment side by side ; 

And the rival nobles struggled 

For a moment hand to hand, 
With lunge and stroke and parry, 

And clashing of brand on brand ; 

And it seemed for a moment that fortune 

Might work a miracle yet, 
And yield a grace to the pride of race 

And the handful hard beset. 

But the severed mass closed on them 

Like flesh on a driven spear, 
And Grant with his Tories and Scotchmen 

Fell savagely on their rear. 

As when some frightful chasm 

Opens beneath the sea, 
The turbid world of waters 

Whirls down tumultuously, 

Or the waterspout, uprearing, 

Grapples the land of storms, 
Till earth and heaven are peopled 

With a chaos of circling forms, 



J 5 



1 6 BENNINGTON. 

Down they came, whirling and tossing 
And crushing with main and might, 

And the Maryland battalion 
Had passed from human sight. 

When the boats of the ruined army 

From the island stole away, 
The eyes of hope looked up and down 

From river and sky and bay. 

But the chieftain's brow was set and sad, 

And moist was the chieftain's eye. 
And now he turned to the hills behind, 

And now to the midnight sky; 

For he knew what dew on the sod was shed 

In the hush of the summer night, 
Where the flower of Maryland bloomed blood-red 

Along the southern height. 
Yes, the pride of Maryland held its ground 

On the grim Gowanus Height. 
1876. 



BENNINGTON. 

A cycle was closed and rounded, 
A continent lost and won, 

When Stark and his men went over 
The earthworks at Bennington. 

Slowly down from the northward, 

Billowing fold on fold, 
Whelming the land and crushing, 

The glimmering glacier rolled. 



BENNINGTON. 

Down from the broad St. Lawrence, 

Bright with its thousand isles, 
Through the Canadian woodlands, 

Sweet with the summer smiles, 

On over field and fastness, 

Village and vantage coigne, 
Rolled the resistless legions 

Led by the bold Burgoyne. 

Roared the craggy ledges 

Looming o'er Lake Champlain ; 

Red with the blaze of navies 
Quivered the land-locked main ; 

Soared the Vancour eagle, 

Screaming, across the sun ; 
Deep dived the loon in terror 

Under Lake Horicon. 

Panther and hart together 

Fled to the wilds afar, 
From the flash and the crash of the cannon 

And the rush of the southward war. 

But at last by the lordly river 

The trampling giant swayed, 
And his massive arm swung eastward 

Like a blindly-plunging blade. 

New England felt her bosom 

Menaced with deadly blow, 
And her minute-men sprang up again 

And flew to bar the foe. 



17 



1 8 BENNINGTON. 

But Stark in his Hampshire valley- 
Watched like a glowering bear, 

That hears the cry go sweeping by 
Yet stirs not from his lair ; 

For on his daring spirit 

A wrath lay like a spell, — 
The wrath of one rewarded ill 

For a great work wrought right well. 

Neighbor and friend and brother 

Flocked to his side in vain, — 
" What, can it be that they long for me 

To ruin their cause again ? 

" Surely the Northern lights are bright. 

Surely the South lies still. 
Would they have more ? — Lo, I left my sword 

On the crest of Bunker Hill." 

But at last from his own New Hampshire 

An urgent summons came, 
That stirred his heart like the voice of God 

From Sinai's walls of flame. 

He bowed his head, and he rose aloft ; 

Again he grasped the brand, — 
" For the cause of man and my native State, 

Not for an ingrate land !" 

Through the mist-veil faintly struggling, 

The rays of the setting sun 
Reddened the leafy village 

Of white-walled Bennington. 



BENNINGTON. 19 

Then out of the dismal weather 

Came many a sound of war, — 
The straggling shots and the volleys 

And the cries, now near now far. 

For forms half seen were chasing 

The phantom forms that fled ; 
And ghostly figures grappled 

And spectres fought and bled; 

Till the mist on a sudden settled 

And they saw before them fair, 
Over a hill to the westward, 

An island in the air. 

There were tree-trunks and waving branches, 
And greensward and flowers below ; 

It rose in a dome of verdure 

From the mist-waves' watery flow. 

A flag from its summit floated 

And a circling earthwork grew, 
As the arms of the swarming soldiers 

At their toil unwonted flew. 

" Aha !" cried the Yankee leader, 

" So the panther has turned at bay 
With his claws of steel and his breath of fire 

Behind that wall of clay ! 

"Our steel is in muscle and sinew. 

But I know" — and his voice rang free — 
" Right well I know we shall strike a blow 

That the world will leap to see." 



2 o BENNING TON. 

I stood by a blazing city 

Till the fires had died away, 
Save a flickering light in the ruins 

And a fitful gleam on the bay. 

But a swarthy cone by the water 
Blue-bristled from point to base, 

With the breath of demons, bursting 
Through the crust of their prison place ; 

And another beside it flaunted 

A thousand rags of red, 
Like the Plague King's dancing banners 

On a mound of the swollen dead. 

Twin brothers of flame and evil, 
In their quivering living light, 

They ruled with a frightful beauty 
The desolate waste of night. 

Thus did the battle mountain 

Blazon with flashes dire ; 
The leaguered crest responded 

In a coronal of fire. 

The tough old fowling-pieces 

In huddling tumult rang. 
Louder the muskets' roaring ! 

Shriller the rifles' clang ! 

Hour after hour the turmoil 

Gathered and swelled apace, 
Till the hill seemed a volcano 

Bursting in every place. 



BENNINGTON. 21 

Then the lights grew faint and meagre, 
Though the hideous noise rolled on ; 

And out of a bath of glory 
Uprose the noble sun. 

It brightened the tossing banner ; 

It yellowed the leafy crest ; 
It smote on the serried weapons, 

On helmet and scarlet breast. 

It drove on the mist below them 

Where Stark and his foremost stood, 

Flashing volley for volley 
Into the stubborn wood. 

A thousand stalwart figures 

Sprang from the gulf profound, 
A thousand guns uplifted 

Went whirling round and round. 

Like some barbarian onslaught 

On a lofty Roman hold ; 
Like the upward rush of Titans 

On Olympian gods of old ; 

With the swirl of the wrangling torrents 

As they dash on a castle wall ; 
With the flame-seas skyward surging 

At the mountain demon's call, 

Heedless of friend and brother 

Stricken to earth below, 
The sons of New England bounded 

On the breastwork of the foe. 
3 



22 BENNINGTON. 

Each stalwart form on the ramparts 

Swaying his battered gun 
Seemed a vengeful giant, looming 

Against the rising sun. 

The pond'rous clubs swept crashing 
Through the bayonets round their feet 

As a woodman's axe-edge crashes 
Through branches mailed in sleet, 

Shattering head and shoulder, 

Splintering arm and thigh, 
Hurling the red-coats earthward 

Like bolts from an angry sky. 

Faster each minute and faster 

The yeomen swarm over the wall, 

And narrower grows the circle 
And thicker the Britons fall ; 

Till Baum with his Hessian swordsmen 

Swift to the rescue flies, 
The frown of the northland on their brows 

And the war-light in their eyes. 

Back reeled the men of Berkshire, 
The mountaineers gave back, 

But Stark and his Hampshire yeomen 
Flung full across their track. 

The stern Teutonic mother 

Well might she grandly eye 
The prowess dread of her war-swarms red 

As they racked the earth and sky. 



BENNING TON. 2 3 

Like rival wrestling athletes 

Grappled the East and West. 
With straining thews and staring eyes 
They swayed and strove for the royal prize, 

A continent's virgin breast. 

Till at last as a strong man's wrenching 

Shatters a brittle vase, 
The lustier arms of the Westland 

Shattered the elder race. 

Baum and his bravest cohorts 

Lay on the trampled sod, 
And Stark's strong cry rose clear and high, 

"Yield in the name of God !" 

Then the sullen Hessians yielded, 

Girt by an iron ring, 
And down from the summit fluttered 

The flag of the British king. 

Vainly the tardy Breyman 

May strive that height to gain ; 
More work for the Hampshire war-clubs ! 

More room for the Hessian slain ! 

The giant's arm is severed, 

The giant's blood flows free, 
And he staggers in the pathway 

That leads to the distant sea. 

The Berkshire and Hampshire yeomen 
With the men of the Hudson join, 

And the gathering flood rolls over 
The host of the bold Burgoyne. 



24 



NORMAN. 

For a cycle was closed and rounded, 
A continent lost and won, 

When Stark and his men went over 
The earthworks at Bennington. 



1877. 



NORMAN. 



Room for the song I sing, 

Or rather the tale I tell ! 
For I count it an idle thing 

(And I never could warble well), 
A pitiful thing and vain, 
To call, with our poet train, 
The vision one's soul has caught, 
The lesson its toil has taught, 
Its memories grandly wrought, 
A lay or a song or a strain : 
The cant of a time outspanned, 
That was true in an older land, 

But is silly and false, I say ; 
For who would dare to stand, 

And chant in the face of day, 

Ay, or the twilight gray, 
His most melodious verse — 

The thing that he calls a lay, 
Though 'tis something better or worse? 
But never singer of old 

When fancies were wrought on air, 
Voicing mellow and bold, 

With listeners everywhere, 
Was haunted by gloried dream 



NORMAN. 25 

As I by the simple theme 

That will have space and to spare. 
That mounts from the hidden spring 

Of life, in the heart and brain, 
And hovers on fitful wing, 

And will not vanish again. 

It went with me this morn, 

As it often has gone before, 

When I passed by the temple door 
Of Liberty's latest born : 

I heard the sounds of yore 
In the water's murmurous fall 
On the terrace below the hall, 
By a million footsteps worn. 
Like a dove through the waving corn 
A vision before me passed, 

Through the trees and the peopled street, 

And the upward glancing heat 
And the downward furnace blast : 
And it comes again, midway 

As I sit between crowd and sky, 

With the noisy birds on high, 

While the wheels below go by, 
And the sparrows brown and gray 
And martins, sallying out 
With furtive rally and rout, 
Strive for the petty sway 
Of the curled acanthus leaves, 
That cap with their carven sheaves 

Yon grove which has turned to stone. 
And the sounds of a larger strife 
Rise from the lower life 



26 NORMAN. 

Through the ceaseless feverish glare. 
And over them all in air, 

Patient and still and lone, 
A hawk is hovering there. 

It was back in the old, old years 

Which seem so far away, 
When the air was heavy with tears 
And chilled by the breath of fears 

And fevered with ceaseless fray, 
When the gentlest hearts beat time 

To the cry of " blood for blood," 
And the nation's march sublime 
Recked little of folly and crime, 
Like a drunkard staggering on 
Under the angry sun, 

Waist-deep in the gory flood. 

The pleasant hills that we knew, 
Fringing the southern view, 

Were shorn to a bristling ridge ; 
The tramp of marching feet 
Echoed in glen and street 

And the long, long reach of bridge. 
Where once the tossing corn 
Laughed in the eye of morn, 
Ugly and dull and worn 

Upreared the grim redoubt. 
Instead of the amber ears, 
Crowning the wheat-field spears, 

Came bayonets bursting out. 
Churches and homes and halls 
Were changed to hospitals 



NORMAN. 

Vivid with human pain ; 
The college overflowed, 
And up and down the road, 
And out to left and right, 
Scattered its tentlets white, 

Scattered its ruby rain. 

It is easy to deal with words, 

But where are the words to tell 
Of the days when thoughts were swords 

And man hurled man to Hell ? 
When death in anger done 

Was a theme for the veriest child, 
A thing of his every hour? 
When he ran to see — and smiled — 
As the captive ranks defiled ; 
And the hearses passing on 

Were a cheap and common show, 

And the wounded journeying slow 
In the heat of an August sun 

Scarce stirred a deeper woe 

Than the hurt of a bird or a flower ! 
The seed that zeal had sown 

Was bearing an evil fruit, 
For the life of man had grown 

Like that of the meanest brute. 
The world was at its worst ; 
The land was all accurst 

In stream and soul and sod : 
The fiend had set his print — 
No spot but felt the dint — 

On the universe of God. 



27 



28 NORMAN. 

Down in our shallow well, 

Oar house-strewn, hill-rimmed bowl, 
We heard not the bursting shell 

Nor the muskets' rattle and roll : 
But ever and anon, 
From over the northern swell 

There came an echoless sound, 
Sullen and blank and dull 
As the falling of lead on wool, 

Or a hammer struck on the ground, 
The voice of a distant gun. 
Then we knew that a shattered power, 
Nearing its dying hour, 

Was striking a vengeful blow, 
As the prostrate game-cock smites 
(Hero of twenty fights !) 

The breast of his vaunting foe : 
One flash of the keen curved steel 
Cuts through the clarion peal, 

And the victor is lying low. 

We knew that a battered horde, 

Brimful of hopes and hates, 
Brown as the sunburnt sward, 
By valley and gap and ford 

Had burst through the mountain gates, 
Dashing with armed hand 
At the very life of the land. 

And every dull report 
Was Early's summons to yield, 
Flung from the open field, 

Or the answer of clay-built fort. 



NORMAN. 29 

Ah ! chaos was all astir 

In the leaguered, startled town, 
As of olden time in her 

Who shrank from the mountain's frown — 
Flame-shot and sinister — 

As the black thick death came down. 

One hour of swift eclipse 
From eyes and ears and lips 

The whole bright world had riven, 
And naught remained, beside 
The city's turbulent tide, 

But the fair forgotten heaven. 
Isled in the heart of all 
Was the fire-girt capital. 

Ay, the sudden summons came 

Like a burst of midnight flame, 

Or the dread archangel's blast 

When the stars shall be downward cast : 

But it came not alike to all. 
There were faces turned on high 
With a happy, thankful cry ; 
There were hearts that throbbed and glowed 
As the glad blood ebbed and flowed, 

Thrilled by that stirring call. 

It came like a sea-blown breeze 

On a fever-tortured brow, 
Or the song of birds and bees 

To a spirit that pines in prison ; 
For they deemed that the lordly star, 

Which had seemed to set but now, 



3° 



NORMAN. 

Again from the clouds of war 

Had in broader glory risen. 
They deemed that the end was near 

Of a hated, hostile sway, 
And the South that they held so dear 

Should again be crowned queen ; 
Through the rush of the coming host 

They saw a proud array, 
Where empire's mighty ghost 

Towered o'er all the scene. 

Visions of young and old, 

That came and went in a breath ! 

Visions that lured the bold 

From life to the brink of death ! 

Who can measure the soul 

With plummet and rod and line, 
And map the chartless shores 

Of the world of the human breast, 
Outspread the mystic scroll, 

Unveil the hidden shrine, 
And bring the shadowy ores 

To a sure assay and test ? 
Let him look through the solemn doors 

On the things that we call divine, 
On the things that the soul abhors, 

And say which are worst and best. 

Not mine the piercing sight 
That can surely read aright 

The fiend in angel guise ; 
Nor mine the hopeless task 
To shatter the inner mask 

And open the self-sealed eyes ; 



NORMAN. 

Nor to trace the doubtful bound 

Where merit may merge in sin, 
Nor to search the shades profound 

Of the will that works within. 
I hold not a painted flag 

My warrant to bless or ban ; 
More than the holiest rag 

Is a noble deed of man. 

I can see my classmate well, 
Though, but for what befell, 

Why should he stay in sight ? 
There was little in form or face, 
Of outer or inner grace, 

To glow in memory's light. 
Only the frank, clear smile 
Of a soul that was free from guile, 
A bearing not too meek, 
And the stalwart limbs and the cheek 
Of the hearty Saxon race. 
Little of good or bad, 

Little to bless or ban ; 
No hero that poets paint, 
No marvel, and sure no saint ; 
Scarcely more, than a lad, 

Yet thoroughly a man. 

What was it that sent him forth, 

Some flash of the Southron pride ? 
Or the claims of his native earth? 

Or the plea of the weaker side? 
Some silently-reasoned creed 

Of the sovereign right of States, 
And shame that their cry of need 

Still found him within the gates ? 



3i 



32 



NORMAN. 

Some stir of the youthful blood ? 

Some dream of the cavaliers ? 
Or the tents by the rushing flood, 

And the crashing of tourney spears ? 
Fancy as fancy may, 

But only this we know, 
That between a day and a day 

He passed to the leaguering foe. 

Taking his life in his hand, 

He sped through the ring of forts, 
With their shadowy warders tall, 

By bastion and palisade. 
As he reached the open land, 

He could hear the sharp reports 
From the flashes along the wall 

Of the random fusillade, 
And the tumult of rush and call 

That followed his escapade. 

But he reached his goal unharmed, 

And he fought in the foremost line 
Which girdled the forts and town, 
When the great hive outward swarmed 
With furious buzz and din. 

He stood like a forest-pine, 

Under the hot sunshine, 

Till a bullet struck him down 
And the skirmishers brought him in, — 

An offering on the shrine 
Of zeal, or folly, or sin. 

The circling host had fled 
Like the legions of the dead 



NORMAN. 

In the misty Norland tale, 
Or the grisly forms and wan, 
That toss in the tattered van 

Of the whirling tropic gale, 

As it swoops on the beaten sail, 
Leaving the rearward seas 
Free to the cloudless breeze 

And the clear, warm light of heaven, 
And all things happy and fair 
Of earth or the upper air 

To the world of waters given. 
The nightmare dream had passed 

And the walls of darkness fell, 
And the light streamed in at last, 

And we knew that all was well. 

The nightmare dream had passed, 

But it left its trail behind 
On the deeply-venomed soul 

And the terror-darkened mind, 
That had lately stood aghast 
And shaken beyond control. 

Ah, fear is a cruel thing ! 
And over the chairs of state 

It folded its evil wing, 
And hard by the ruler's gate, 
Swollen, it lay in wait, 

Crouched for a vengeful spring. 

The months went by, went by, 
And the clear, cool autumn came, 

With its aureole of haze 

And its forest-robes of flame ; 
4 



33 



34 



NORMAN. 

And out in the pleasing weather, 
Like a bird of battered feather, 
Yet happy in all things fair 
And the wine of sky and air, 

The stricken captive came. 
Out into the smile of God, 

Out under the frown of hate, 
For the evil wings were abroad, 
And the stealthy tread on the sod 

Was the tread of the form by the gate. 

To the good brass-buttoned souls, 

Who live but in order-rolls 

And breathe but by word of command 

Or the wave of a master's hand, — 

Our gallant human machines, 

With their clockwork of ends and means 

Spring-wound and set and driven 

By the gods of their little heaven ! — 

Our fine automata, 

Puppets of martial law, 

Coated and strapped and laced, 

Belted and bound and braced 

In conscience and heart and waist, 

Uniformed in and out ; 

Who will stifle a freeman's vote, 

Or fly at a brother's throat, 

Or stamp on a tribe or a State, 

To settle all rights in debate, 

With never a scruple or doubt, 

At the word of a dolt or a knave 

The slaves of a slave of a slave ! 

Our decorous dons of war, 



NORMAN. 

Whose dream of the mission of man 

Is to rend like a dog when bidden, 

And grieve like a dog when chidden, 

And frisk at the smiling lip 

Of him who handles the whip, 

And scatters the bones and bars 

Gewgaws and eagles and stars ! 

To these good souls, I say, 

The lawless freak of the lad 

Had seemed like a monstrous thing, 

And little with them could weigh 

In the scale with that venture mad, 

The prison-life dull and sad, 

And the wound with its ache and sting. 

So they held a conclave wise, 
Like owls with their daylight eyes ; 
A forum by far too grand 
For the simple law of the land ; 
A stiff-starched, lordly nest 
Of the glorious overdressed, 
To consider the weighty matter. 
And epaulets glowed and glistened, 
And warriors mouthed and listened, 
And day after day went by ; 
And the end of all the chatter 
Was this, — that the lad must die. 

Yet sometimes it seemed to me, 
Though their hands had signed the decree, 
That even their well-drilled hearts 
Shrank from the thought of taking 
That poor young life and waking 
Remorse that r rarely departs. 



35 



$6 NORMAN. 

Or else, with all their blame 

And their outcry over his shame, 

Wondrous strange was the faith 

Which they placed in the simple truth 

Of the hearty, daring youth 

In that pass between life and death. 

We could see him day by day, 

At task or at noontime play, 

Silent and calm as of old, 

With never a line or a fold 

On cheek or forehead or lip, 

And only a hidden scar 

To tell of his gull-like dip 

In the boiling chaos of war, 

Or the after-time of pain, 

And weakness of body and brain, 

Or the swift doom then impending. 

And we knew that his faithful word 

Was the only human chain 

Which held him beneath the sword 

Waiting its sure descending. 

Think — from the college hill 

The woodlands broad and still 

Reddened in easy sight ; 

And friendly hands were near, 

And voices at his ear, 

Urging by day and night : 

" They have opened wide the gate, 

And their wish is plain to see. 
Why should you pause and wait 

When their act has set you free?" 



NORMAN. 37 

And again : " A promise to die 

Is a promise no man may keep ; 
It is God, not you nor I, 

Who should bid our friends to weep. 
Self-murder is always sin." 
And he knew that the friendly din 
Uttered the silent wish 
Of those who were proudest and dearest, — 

For how could they see his death ? 

And he heard in that z^^rbreath, 
Always the strongest and clearest, 
His father's promise of aid 

Whenever he willed to fly. 

And he looked on the purple sky, 

And the city clustered below, 

And the river's gleaming flow, 
The fields and the tempting wood, — ■ 
And he flushed with the mounting blood. 
But this was all that he said : 

" I have given my word — to die." 

Yet be sure that life was sweet 

In the haze of the dying year, 
When the autumn glories meet 

With the winter's wine of cheer, 
When the blood is alive and astir, 
And the flushing covies whir 

To the thicket along the lea, 
And the cry is blithe and clear, 
Where over the leaflets sere 

The hounds are ranging free. 
On the one hand life and light 

And the fair sky overbending ; 
4* 



3 8 NORMAN. 

On the other the solemn night, 
And with it his day was blending. 

Yet he turned to the shadowed path, 
He turned from the things that be, 
Calmly, undauntedly, 

Waiting the day of his death. 

Meanwhile, with every plea 

Which terror's mastery 

In that direst need could urge, 

Parent and friend in vain 

Beat again and again, 

With the force of a stormy surge, 

On the ear of the lord of the land, — 

That strange hinge-jointed man, 

(Since grown to a tutelar saint !) 

A compound sure as quaint 

As any since time began ; 

The man of the gnarled hand, 

And the heart that was kind at core, 

And the homely mother wit 

That probed like a random blade, 

With often a sting in it, 

And often the heal of a sore ; 

And the broad-blown humor arrayed 

In all that could lend a jest, 

Spoils of the purest and best, 

Spoils of the meanest and lowest ; 
For his taste was as slow and dull 
(Though he worshipped the beautiful) 

As the very dullest and slowest. 
A crude, unharnessed son 
(And truly a noble one) 



NORMAN. 39 

Of the jagged backwoods clearing, 
Where the forces of human life, 
With savage nature at strife, 

Toil sturdily on unfearing ; 
Yet garnished with odds and ends 
Of civilized speech and ways, 

Decorums at random seized, 

To be used when the humor pleased, 
And sometimes to make amends, 

In the life of his later days. 
Half gentleman, half buffoon, 

Jester and sage and chief, 
He came a heaven-sent boon 

To a throttled land's relief; 
With a will like a mountain wall 

And a zeal that burnt like fire 

Under its odd attire 

Of ape-like grimace and caprice : 
And that form so gaunt and tall 

Stalked through to triumphant peace. 

Twice in varying moods 

He answered hastily " No !" 
Once with a story brought 
From the depths of the Western woods, 
That seemed to the father's thought 

A mockery of his woe ; 
And once in a kindly tone 

Urging his duty to all, 

And the evil that might befall 
If he thought of but one alone. 
But at last as the time drew near, 
In a turmoil of utter fear, 



4o 



NORMAN. 

Came the last and wildest plea, 
And it gained the victory. 

For the depths of his heart were stirred ; 
And he bade the net unweave, 
Almost on the very eve, 
And free from the toils of death 

The doomed and desolate bird. 

And surely his dying breath 

On that black Good Friday night, 

When the land went wild with fright 

And horror in field and town, 
As he lay with his bleeding head, 
Ere he passed to the realm of the dead, 

Staining a player's gown, 
Was burdened by no regret 
For the life he had deigned to recall 
From the gate of the shadowy wall, 
On the border of both worlds set. 

And for Norman himself — Ah, well ! 
He passed from the tale I tell : 
He is lost in the nameless ranks 

Of the heroes who work and die 

Under our modern sky, 
Winning not praise nor thanks. 
But somehow it often seems 
That of all the fitful dreams 
Which rise from that old, old time, 
The one that clings and gleams 
Is the theme of this random rhyme. 
Eagles and stars go by, 
Banners and pennons fly 



A CHRISTMAS LETTER. 

In your savage pageantry ; 

But the foremost place I give 
To the calm forgotten youth, 
Who stood by the flag of truth, 

Who would not lie to live, 
And who lived though he did not lie ! 



4i 



[879. 



A CHRISTMAS LETTER. 

When the moon is broken on the waters, 
Rippling, rolling, and flashing into splendor, 
How the shadows limned upon her silver 
Dance and quiver into forms fantastic ! 
How the reaper dear to merry childhood 
Merges, loses all his olden features, 
Other semblance taking every moment ! 

Often thus, in gazing on the river 
Of the nation's thought that hurries seaward, 
Fanned by zephyrs, stirred by angry breezes, 
Star-bespangled, gloomed by passing cloudlets, 
Have I viewed the clear, white disk of Boston 
Brightening all the current into glory. 
While within the fancy-charming circle 
Forms unseen, yet loved for noble doing, 
Shifted, changing, like dissolving figures 
Cast in darkness on a snowy background. 

You have here the first start that was made by my brain. 
In a more or less decasyllabical train, 



42 



A CHRISTMAS LETTER. 



As I waited by Charles for the summons to go — 
Let me finish it here by the Delaware's flow. 
But I give up the metre ; I'm bad at a jig ; 
And I can't dance off-hand in Catullian rig. 
Already I've written some rickety lines, 
Like a broken-back pitchfork with spider-leg tines, 
Or the cabala-marks that my pencil is making, 
'Twixt rumbling and tumbling, and shaking and 

quaking. 
Perhaps here and there you can guess what I mean ; 
If you can't, never mind; it will blossom unseen. 

You caught me at echoing once, and forgot ; 
Now, see, I am echoing whether or not. 
Not echoing, no ; for the mountain-side sends 
The very same message it gains from its friends ; 
Tone, syllable, emphasis, accent are there ; 
The soul of the sender returns through the air. 
Alas ! but one singer can render again 
The choir of the dawning, the song-sparrow's strain. 
Blithe, cheery, delightful, how welcome to all, 
The fine thrill of music that runs through his call ! 
Mark the turn of his head ; note his quivering wings ; 
We hear but his voice, but the whole of him sings. 

Tone, finger, and eye, how they pointed the verse ! 
How they sped like a dart, every epithet terse ! 
How he captured the seer with a turn of his ee ! 
How he brought down the bard with his Quakerish 

"thee" ! 
How light was his sweep o'er the hallowed sod 
Of " the velvety verse that Evangeline trod" ! 



A CHRISTMAS LETTER. 



43 



As I never before, shall I ever again 

See grouped at one board that great quartette of men ! 

For time will not halt for the pleader that clings, 

And the thrush and the sparrow have vanishing wings. 

Enough ; to the present the present is given : 

We may meet in Valhalla, or Hades, or Heaven. 

And now from the Chester this tribute I send 

To the man but once seen, whom I may not call friend, 

A gift not unmeet for the season of mirth, — 

'Tis the sunshine of Maryland drawn from her earth. 

You will find in its fragrance the breath of the South, 

And the thanks and the praise of her eloquent mouth. 

By the Puritan punch-bowl a crystal may stand, 

And the North and the South clasp a brotherly hand. 

Perhaps, when the festival time has gone by, 

With its stirring appeals to the ear or the eye, 

By that "oriel" sitting, its subtle perfume 

May fill with fresh fancies the gathering gloom. 

You may see the wide orchard, a forest made tame, 

With its coralline aisles ere they burst into flame; 

How graceful the network of delicate sprigs, 

With the fine blush of nature on branches and twigs ! 

Fair virginal nature, who waits for the day 

When the young year shall robe her in bridal array. 

It has come ! it has come ! and we lose the rare glow 

In hillock on hillock of roseate snow. 

The blush is still there, but the bridal-veil spreads 

Its thick folds of beauty o'er myriad heads, 

As the fleeces of sunset embosom the ray 

Last shot from the shaft of the lord of the day. 



44 



A CHRISTMAS LETTER. 



For each tree is a cloud where the sun and the mist 
Have mingled their graces in beautiful tryst, 
And far to the westward the eye ranges o'er 
A vast sea of love with an emerald shore, 
Where the billows melt down to a rose-tinted plain, 
And the long wall of woodland puts bounds to the 
main. 

There the silvery lines of the saplings are seen, 
And the first tender leafing of delicate green ; 
The pine with its deepening mellow of gold ; 
The cedars bronze clumping, outbellying bold. 
And deep in their heart, I remember right well, 
The warm mossy bowl of a shadowy dell, 
Where we found fairy wine-cups and feathery fern, 
And round winter-berries that ruby-like burn, 
With one who has passed to the isles of the blest, 
And the great flush of glory that lulls them to rest. 

But I wander. Yet later the midsummer hours 
Hang globes of ripe beauty on verdurous bowers ; 
Through the leaves, like Hesperides' apples, they peep, 
Or the face of an angel just flashing from sleep : 
Rich masses of shimmering, varying glow, 
All ruddy above and all sunny below, 
And the gay, kindly juices that revel within 
Will burst at a touch through the delicate skin. 

The still — must one drop to the earth from the sky ? 
Well, the death is a good one for peaches to die. 
Right ruinous now (and our Hawthorne has said 
That ruins are needed where poetry's bred), 
Where fire and the streamlet the miracle wrought 
That turned to crude sweetness that beauty unbought. 



A CHRISTMAS LETTER. 



45 



The sycamore, giant-like, towers above ; 

The birds in the bushes make musical love ; 

The rill on the pebbles keeps mystical rhyme ; 

The village-bell answers with far-stealing chime 

(The one only sound that the world sends us here, 

Lest nature than man should to man be more dear) ; 

The greenbrier wattles its guardian wall ; 

The grape-vines have covered the wreck with their pall ; 

Nought now may appeal to the ear or the eye, 

Save the beauty of earth and the blue of the sky. 

What more ? Like a poem, the soul of the peach 
Needs time more than toil its perfection to reach ; 
One may strain at a task, but the after-touch shows 
That only is worthy which ripens and grows. 

It has waited and ripened in walls where the rime 
Has fallen, like snow-flakes, from magical time, 
Where Pope, Swift, and Johnson hold rule on the 

shelves, 
And colony beauties make eyes at themselves 
In mirrors, quaint gilt when the silver was new. 
All life's changeless round has been passed in their 

view : 
Birth, marriage, love, hatred, death, marriage, and 

birth, — 
The self-same old story of dear mother earth. 

Perhaps the Blue Lady has taken a sip, — 
The tutelar spectre of Gumbo and Jip, 
Who rules in the garret rooms, long given o'er 
To spoils of the centuries vanished before ; 
In the gleam of the moon by the harpsichord sits, 
And frightens the chambermaid out of her wits. 

5 



46 A CHRISTMAS LETTER. 

Her fingers dance lightly, — no music will follow, 
And her eyes, when she turns them, are soulless and 
hollow. 

It has felt the strong breezes of noble Queen Anne, 
Where "Claiborne the traitor" stood firmly for man, 
Faced stern and unflinching both Calvert and king, 
And taught at the last that the vanquished can sting. 
And later, when rang o'er the Chesapeake sand 
The summons to arms of a newly-born land, 
Here leaped the battalion that rushed on the steel, 
And forced at red Brooklyn the Britons to reel, 
Hand to hand, breast to breast. Though they sank on 

the sod, 
They had saved the Right Wing — and they left it to 

God. 
Yet again, when the sword from its sheath flashing flew, 
The men of Queen Anne faced the soldiers in blue ; 
A quarrel ill-starred between brother and friend ; 
But they fought by their light and they fought to the 

end. 
Through the wrath of the storm wrought the will of 

the sky. 
The palm lies in splinters, the pine towers high. 
Alas ! the broad frondage is blackened and dead, 
The far-scattered fragments are dripping with red. 
Right or wrong, wise or foolish, so far as we ken, 
The soil of Queen Anne has been fruitful of men. 

May it tell of the pictures your pencil should limn, — 
The long prairie reaches, the forest aisles dim ; 
The branches that brawl in the gash-like ravine, 
Where the delicate crocus blooms open unseen ; 



A MARYLAND HOMESTEAD. 



47 



The whispering reedlands that wake in full cry 
With the chorus of frogs when the evening is nigh ; 
The swan-whitened shallows like quivering snow; 
The far-sailing osprey that gazes below ; 
The bittern that flaps down the stream of the dead 
Where the network of waters is gleaming like lead ; 
The sentinel vultures that quarter the sky, — 
Not a feather is stirred, not a motion nor cry ; 
Round and round, without effort, they sail as they will, 
Their mission is sombre, to watch and be still. 
1877. 



A MARYLAND HOMESTEAD. 

The sun is bright ; the earth and heavens are gay. 
The time is winter, yet the air says May. 
Mark yonder hawk that quivers in the sky ; 
What placid quaintness dreams beneath his eye ! 
His post be mine ; a nobler quarry own 
And give the nations what is love's alone. 

O spot more dear than all the world beside ! 
O homestead-hamlet where I won my bride ! 
Where birds sang welcome to my eldest born, 
My little Rose — unconscious of the thorn. 
Where many an idle summer hour was spent 
In the full bliss of unalloyed content. 

How well I mind the gentle reader's tone ! 
The kind companions ! one, alas ! is flown 
(Whose life was goodness, written in her face, 
Whose soul was music as her breath was grace). 



48 A MARYLAND HOMESTEAD. 

The deep-set window with its squares of glass, 
The cumbrous door and oblong knob of brass, 
The sideboard's half-seen prophecy of cheer; 
High overhead the swinging chandelier ; 
The zephyr couch below the ample stair; 
The door-framed picture of the open air. 

There the dwarfed cedar vainly seemed to strive 

In the sharp clasping of the circling drive ; 

The green leaves fluttered o'er the sheep-flecked lawn, 

Crept the slow wain by clumsy oxen drawn ; 

Beyond the fences of the dusty road 

The billowy amber of the wheat-field showed ; 

The corn, like scythe-blades, sparkled in the sun ; 

The fringing woodlands blended into one ; 

The light winds fanned me in the ancient hall ; 

And the white clouds went sailing over all. 

When holy evening settled calm and still 
We watched the village brighten on the hill, 
As the round sun passed downward to his rest, 
And left God's glory in the golden West, — 
The great cloud blazing like a sheaf of fire ; 
The purple isles' imperial-hued attire ; 
The luminous fringe ; the doubtful dash of green ; 
The gradual changes of the sinking scene ! 
Breathless we gazed with awe and strange delight, 
Till pomp and glory faded into night. 
Surely if e'er the golden walls are riven, 
'Tis when the sunset opens into heaven. 

Then from some hidden nook serene and chill 
Came the clear note of lonesome whippoorwill. 



A MARYLAND HOMESTEAD. 49 

The mocking partridge called us from the hedge, 
His pert "Bob White," an olden privilege. 
The bull-bats darted past the maple's rim, 
Like vampire spirits shrilly voiced and dim. 
The shrieking swallows circled line on line 
In lessening spirals round their chimney shrine, 
Like some wild dervish dance in days of eld 
Or witches' sabbath at the midnight held. 
As the bright star-eyes opened one by one, 
Each weed-tuft answered with its little sun, 
Till mounting fire-flies, pulsing in their flight, 
Made all the lawn with fairy lanterns bright. 

The katydid kept rasping in the elms ; 
The screech-owl wailed amid his shadowy realms ; 
The frogs' fine chorus from the marshy stream 
Came like the voices of a summer dream. 
No other sound was heard o'er all the earth, 
Save the low murmur or the burst of mirth, 
Where old-time portraits in the lamp-light glowed, 
And the quaint goblet silver-gleaming showed. 

But, hark ! a lustier, jollier peal ascends 
From the swart concourse of our humbler friends. 
Aunt Ellen's kitchen, may the painter thrive 
Who paints that picture as it looked alive ! 
The much-enduring house-cat and her young; 
The truant dog that lapped with eager tongue ; 
The wrangling chickens by the open door ; 
The round-eyed baby seated on the floor ; 
The wearied farm-hands lolling at their ease ; 
The strapping housemaid prone to flirt and tease ; 
5* 



5° 



A MARYLAND HOMESTEAD. 

The queen who owned a turban for a crown, 
A stew-pan sceptre and a throne burnt brown ; 
The tattered minstrel perched upon the stair, 
His head thrown sidewise with a knowing air, 
While his deft hands the soft accordion press, 
Or wake the home-made flute to happiness. 
Blithe race, so poor in all the world can give ; 
So passing rich in knowing how to live ! 

I stand once more in sunshine and the dew 
And clasp the mansion in my loving view. 
The curtaining leaves just break away before 
The jutting porch that screens the ample door, 
Flanked by the roses' snow-cups of perfume, 
And the crape-myrtle in its crisp pink bloom. 
I note the brown walls brought from over sea 
Sink, step by step, to greet the Eastern lee, 
From triple-storied portliness and pride 
To the low kitchen's archway-guarded side. 
Old Time has let his scarring crowfeet fall 
On every inch of woodwork and of wall. 
The sills are dark with sixscore years' decay ; 
And the last pillar — see — has fallen away. 

A wide gap opens in the robe of moss 

That roofs the smoke-house with its yellow gloss. 

Its wind -bleached arm the lofty sweep uprears ; 

The battered well-curb sparkles in its tears. 

The venturous setter crowns with outstretched paw 

The long dun hillock of the ice-house straw. 

Clasped in the elbow of the bending lane, 

The farm-roofs cluster brown with many a stain. 



A MARYLAND HOMESTEAD. 5I 

The quarter, lusty corporal in red, 

Marshals its awkward squad of frame and shed ; 

The tottering stable leans with listening ear 

To the bright cottage of the overseer \ 

And white-winged legions ever circle nigh 

The barn's sharp ridge-pole pointing to the sky. 

A home, a village, and a picture too, 

The homestead-hamlet dawns upon the view. 

Again I lie beneath the willow shade, 

And watch the sunshine weave its golden braid. 

Above, the hollow buttressed bole expands, 

Its massy branches reaching shattered hands, 

Where, deeply sunk, thy round-doored homes I see, 

Pert pretty wren, our least troglodyte. 

The graveyard cedars' century-guarding row, 
The flowering cherry with its mound of snow, 
The bare-boughed locust where the martins strive, 
The bowery alley where the lilacs thrive, 
The lightning swallow's purple-flashing coat, 
The distant wood-dove's melancholy note, 
The faint-heard call of strutting chanticleer, 
The day-long chorus of the song-birds dear, — 
All, all combine to weave a subtle spell 
Of shadowy day-dreams where I love to dwell. 

The old colonial days have come again, 
Of plenteous cheer and rare good will to men. 
Bright forms, long hidden from the light of day, 
Float lightly forth in quaintly-garbed array. 
Without a sound the phantom footsteps pass 
The terraced garden's waste of weeds and grass. 



52 A MARYLAND HOMESTEAD. 

With all the graceful stateliness of yore 

They bend to pluck the flowers that bloom no more. 

Their merry laughter dies upon the air, 

But leaves its sunshine in their beauty rare : 

And yonder — as I live — the walnut-tree 

Shades a young couple, — lovers? can it be? 

Who tell the tale their children's children told 

When the soft earth had wrapped them in its fold. 

I start, — a thunder-burst, — the dream is gone. 
See yonder cloud that rushes grandly on. 
Its swollen cheeks are flushed with angry red ; 
A cowl of blackness swathes its mighty head ; 
The warning shadow swift before it flies, 
Like Satan's herald fleeing from the skies. 
Like some lost woman in her wild despair, 
The willow tosses high its tangled hair. 
A moment more, and all is crash and gloom ; 
The judgment glare, the darkness of the tomb ; 
While hurrying demons yell amid the blast 
Their mad delight in the confusion vast. 
Yet my thrilled spirit, swelled beyond its form, 
Drains to the lees the vintage of the storm, 
Clasps with, full hands the glory and the glare, 
And with the tempest hurtles through the air. 

1878. 



CHRISTMAS. 



53 



CHRISTMAS. 1863. 

Another spring has come and gone, 
E'en as its flowerets brighten on 

The fields, then fade and die. 
Another summer's balmy air, 
Another autumn's leafy glare, 

Have left our cheerless sky. 

Another year for Time's vast store, 
To join the ages gone before, 

The reaper garners in. 
And now we reach the natal day 
Of Him who gave his life away 

To expiate man's sin. 

We reach that day of greatest joy, 
Of happiness without alloy, 

Reminding of His love ; 
That welcome day to young and old, 
Which gives to those of earthly mould 

A joy like that above. 

But now o'er all our bleeding land, 
From where upon the glistening sand 

The Atlantic flings its spray, 
To where the blue Pacific waves 
Reverberate through ocean caves 

And mark the close of day, 



54 



WINTER. 

From cots upon the mountain-side, 
From lordly temples built to pride, 

From avenues and fields, 
There rises still the same sad wail, 
Swelling and deepening every gale, 

Which each bereaved heart yields, 

For husband, father, brother, son, 
In battle lost or victory won, 

Fallen in Southern land, 
To die upon the hard-fought plain, 
And with their own heart's blood to stain 

An unfamiliar strand. 

How grateful, then, ought we to be 
That once again we round us see 

Each well-remembered face ! 
That death has still our circle spared, 
While others, taken unprepared, 

Have gone and left no trace ! 



WINTER. 



Soon shall the snow-flakes flutter through the air, 

Driven by eddying currents to and fro, 
In curious spirals round and round career, 
And bury deep the grasses' withering spear 
In wild fantastic wreaths of circling snow. 



IMPROMPTU. 

Spring, summer, autumn, all have beauties rare 

To captivate the heart and charm the eye. 
The zephyrs gay that gently fan the air, 
The far-stretched vistas of the woodlands, where 
Impervious foliage veils the burning sky, 

The modest flowers that deck the fields and hills, 

The rainbow's arch that spans the ether blue, 
The placid lakes, the gently murmuring rills 
By verdure fringed, the pine's deep tone that fills 
All hearers with repose, the mellow hue 

Of the ripe apples hanging from the bough, 

The gorgeous sunset reddening in the West, 
Now gilding the encircling clouds, and now 
Suffusing half the heavens with chastened glow, 
The giant elms that hide the robin's nest. 

These graces fair the softer seasons own, 
Each its allotted portion sweetly bright. 

But grander far the wintry forests lone, 

The frozen lake, the frost-king's icy throne, 
And flaming Sirius' distant beam by night. 

1863 or 1864. 



55 



IMPROMPTU. 

The dirge is swelling deep 
As the lifeless forms depart ; 

Low moans the muffled drum, 

" Farewell to each gallant heart." 



56 IMPROMPTU. 

There in the car of death 

Lie warriors true and brave 
As e'er for land and home 

Their lives an offering gave. 

Thousands have gone before 

Struck down by Death's red hand, 

Comrades now met once more 
In the blessed spirit-land. 

In the cause of truth and right 
Their heart's best blood was shed ; 

For their country and her flag 

They are numbered with the dead. 

When the day of reckoning comes, 

The day of joy, of doom, 
When the sea gives up its dead 

And the sods release from gloom, 

When the towering mountains quake 
And the sun is quenched in night, 

And the heavens, a mighty scroll, 
Retire from Nature's blight, 

When the judgment book on high 

Its secrets shall unfold, 
Their deeds shall be writ on its pages bright 

In characters of gold. 
1864. 



MEM OR Y. 5 7 



MEMORY. 

Forth from the bosom of Elysian hills 

The fountain-spring of life its current pours, 

Translucent as the living lymph that fills 
The fabled basin in Dorado's floors, 
Rejuvenating famed in Spanish shores : 

And down it rushes in its shining track, 

And now it graceful sweeps, now madly roars ; 

Until in turbid current foul and slack 

It spreads in pools as if to wander back. 

As down its current, wider grown and deep, 
The wearied traveller on his pathway wends, 

Small pleasure from the landscape does he reap, 
But finds in marshes black the tide distends, 
Where in bewildering maze the prospect blends. 

The gloomy cypress waves its dark attire, 
The dim-lit vista in obscurance ends, 

The ignis-fatuus lends its baleful fire 

To lure its followers deeper in the mire. 

But different far his pleasure-giving fate 

Who would toward its fount the streamlet trace, 

With step elastic and with eye elate 

He views the short-lived bubbles' buoyant race, 
And treads amid the flowers its bank that grace, 

Where serpent-like it winds its sinuous course ; 
And as he wanders on with joyous face 

This thought returns, armed with conviction's force. 

Life's richest gems lie nearest to its source. 

1864. 

6 



58 



THE GRAND REVIEW. 



THE GRAND REVIEW. 

Back from Southern scenes of blood 

Came the joyous victors home, 
In a blue-clad bannered flood 

Pouring through Columbia's Rome, 
While the crowd rolled and surged all around. 
High the tattered banners wave 
Proudly o'er the laurelled brave, 
As above the hero's grave, 
Sacred ground. 

In the dust-cloud overhead 

Troops a silent spectral host ; 
By the foeman's bullet sped 

They have yielded up the ghost, 
And the Southern pines wave o'er their tomb. 
And the hollow rolling tread 
Is the voices of the dead, 
Lying cold, unsepulchred, 
In the gloom. 

Gazing on the moving tide, 

All the present fades away, 
With its pageant and pride, 
Laurels green and banners gay, 
And the far future's gates open wide : 
And within those portals bright 
Glorious visions greet my sight ; 
Brothers once again unite, 
Side by side. 
1865. 



THE VOICES OF THE WIND. 59 



THE VOICES OF THE WIND. 

Hear the slumbrous summer wind, 

Soothing wind. 
In its balmy quietude what happiness we find ! 

How it sighs amid the trees, 

In a gentle zephyrous breeze, 

Flowing through the iEolian harp 

Of the pines that scarcely warp 
At its breath ! 

Bearing to our ears beneath 

Still the same monotonous hum, 

Like the pheasant's distant drum, 
Sounding faintly, faintly through the woodlands sere, 
Swelling now, now dying, on the ear. 

While through all our senses steals, 

Steals a languid drowsy pleasure, 

All the bliss of rest and leisure, 

Summer's quiet, priceless boon ; 

And beneath the sun of noon 

Nature lies in silent sleep, 

Peaceful, motionless, and deep ; 

Save alone the whispering breeze 

Crooning softly through the trees; 

Save the sighing, swelling, dying, 

Music of the summer breeze. 

Hear the storm-foretelling wind, 

Warning wind. 
What a fearful tale it tells to the mind ! 

Floating from the storm-cloud's track, 

From the devastation black 



6o THE VOICES OF THE WIND. 

Of the Storm-King ; 
Whispering 

Of shattered woods and falling floods 
And proud trees bending to the quivering ground. 

Scarce a leaf is stirred ; 

Scarce a sound is heard, 
Save a low, dismal sighing all around, 

A saddened, plaintive murmuring 

That appeals not to the ear ; 

But with curdling sense of fear 

(Such as in the depth of night 

Fills the spirit with affright, 

And breathless awe, and dread 

Of visits from the dead) 
Appals the heart and clogs the pulses' flow. 

While sadly slow, 

And laden all with woe, 

Floats on the warning wind, 

The storm-foretelling wind. 

Hear the raging midnight wind, 

Raving wind. 
How it rouses with its fury soul and mind ! 

Soughing from the inky sky 

With a stormful energy, 

Like a far tempestuous sea, 

Hurled upon a rocky shore 

With a hoarse and awful roar : 

Swelling, rising, raving, raging, 

Shrieking out its wild despair, 

As though the heaven-fallen host, 

All the spirits damned and lost, 

Were, in maddening career. 



SUNSET VISIONS. 6 1 

Sweeping round the lonely house, 

Whirling high the spectral boughs, 
Racking with malignant fury earth and air, 
Till mind and soul in the weird conflict share, 

And all is as a starless sea 

Tossing in its agony. 

Thus in midnight's solemn hour, 

With a spirit-wakening power, 

O'er earth and ocean wave 

Does the weird night-wind rave. 



1865. 



SUNSET VISIONS. 

Once at the hour when pensive Eve 

Approached with welcome step and slow, 

I viewed the dying sunlight weave 
A deep immeasurable glow. 

And gazing rapt upon the sight, 

It seemed that spread before me lay 

A landscape clad in robes of light 
And gorgeous as the gates of day. 

Huge mountains rose august and high, 
Peak piled on peak and range on range, 

Outstanding from the molten sky, 

While at their feet, in contrast strange, 

Broad placid lakes of rosy sheen 
Lay 'mid the purple-tinted hills. 

Adown the valleys deep and green 
Came a far glimpse of sparkling rills. 
6* 



62 SUNSET VISIONS. 

And through those vales bright rivers flowed 
In many a wide, meandering sweep ; 

The sunlight o'er them broke and glowed, 
And mellowed splendors hushed their sleep. 

A holy quiet wrapped it round ; 

My soul to stillness like was hushed. 
No note it took of things around ; 

While from its inmost depths there gushed 

The recognizing joy we feel 

When long-departed friends are met, 

Who once have shared our woe and weal, 
And link their memories with us yet. 

But now dissolves the fairy sight, 

The evanescent traceries fade, 
As melt beneath the morning light 

The gem-like dew-drops of the glade. 

The scene was gone. The glowing hues 
From evening's brow had fled away, 

But faithful memory oft renews 

Remembrance of that heavenly day. 

If human souls eternal be, 

Eternal, too, must be their powers. 

The priceless blooms of memory 

Die not the death of earthly flowers. 

No gift that in her charge we place 
Is lost from memory's guardian care ; 

Though oft we fear gone every trace, 
They still repose in casket rare. 



SUNSET VISIONS. 63 

Until, when least we seek the spring, 

The lid flies open and discloses, 
Like genii ruled by charmed ring, 

The long-sought, long-mourned gems and roses. 

Somewhere within its depths must lie 

The memories of a former life, 
As unseen stars sleep in the sky 

Beyond the reach of earthly strife. 

God fashioned forth the voiceless clay, 

The dwelling of the soul and mind ; 
But in the light of heavenly day 

The glorious habitants reclined, 

Until into the slumbering clod 

He breathed His own celestial fire, 
And man became the child of God, 

The living image of his Sire. 

Within the soul's unfathomed clime 

There lurks a subtle memory, 
Which, far outstretching bounds of time, 

Seems grasping at eternity. 

And, gazing back upon that sea 

Whence all have come, where all return, 

That chaos of immensity, 

Earth's travellers' starting-point and bourn, 

It sometimes seems to catch the roar, 

Ascending from abysses vast, 
Of billows striking on the shore, 

The lifeless shore of centuries past ; 



64 AN AUTUMN STORM. 

And through the mist that clouds its face 

Discerns with more than mortal ken 
Shapes indistinct uprise from space 
And people all the void again. 
1865. 



AN AUTUMN STORM. 

When the black Storm -King rises in his wrath, 

And sweeps o'er earth with devastating path, 

Darting his fiery shafts from cloud to cloud, 

And in low bass delivering mandates proud, 

Ah, then I love to mingle in the scene, 

More grandly solemn than its mood serene, 

To see the lightning's mad, capricious leap 

Cleave the dim mazes of the upper deep, 

And hear the thunder rumble loud through heaven 

As though celestial hosts had wildly striven, 

And their artillery's detonating sound 

Had, heaven escaping, filled the void profound. 

Mark how the leaves desert the sheltering tree, 
And, trembling, fly the danger they foresee. 
The sportive swallows quit the airy height 
Where late they revelled in the morning light : 
In strange gyrations circling madly round, 
They barely skim the surface of the ground ; 
On every side their plaintive twitterings rise 
In vain remonstrance to the angry skies, — 
Vain, for the Storm-King comes, and to his ear 
Are music all the pleading cries of fear. 



AN AUTUMN STORM. 65 

At his command the waves uprear their heads, 
And rivers foam within their channelled beds. 
What can he care for puny human woes 
At whose command the elements arose ! 

His sable wings across the heavens are thrown, 
From north to south, a wide unbroken zone. 
Out from the west his marshalled legions pour, 
Like countless sea-waves moving to the shore. 
No ray of light along the host appears, 
Plays round their heads or glistens on their spears. 
Stately and solemn, pitiless and vast, 
They sink their presence in the soul at last, 

The tempest bursts. The jagged lightning tears 

Its way from heaven to earth, and onward bears 

Its course. The stricken ether shrinks aghast, 

Then sudden closes, with unearthly blast 

Of thunder. Then a rattling, rolling roar 

Racks the whole air, and rising more and more, 

Crash succeeds crash and peal crowds fast on peal, 

Until the very skies begin to reel, 

And through the wooded hills the awful sound 

Re-echoes solemnly; the trembling ground 

Hurls it again into the shuddering air. 

The storm- stripped trees wave high their branches bare, 

Twisted and wrung as in the throes of death, 

And thresh the windy chaos underneath. 

While the great diapason bellows round 

And fills all heaven with mighty crashing sound. 

But my rapt soul finds each discordant key 
Music divine, a crash of melody, 



66 SNOW-FLAKES. 

Mounts on aerial wings through realms of space 
And looks the tempest in its awful face, 
Guides the swift current of the hurtling blast, 
Enthroned on lightning sweeps sublimely past, 
And stirs the holy organ-keys of heaven, 
Whence deep-toned euphony to earth is given. 
For the grand harp — that silent in the soul 
Lies when the peaceful zephyrs o'er it roll — 
Give forth weird music when the tempest's wing 
Sweeps rudely o'er each fluctuating string ; 
And Nature in her every changeful form 
Has sympathy with man ; but most the storm 
Seems in the soul resembling tones to find, 
And fill harmoniously the longing mind. 
1865. 



SNOW-FLAKES. 

Softly, softly through the air 
Down the snow-flakes flutter, 

Down, down, 
Down upon the hill-sides bare 

And brown. 
Over field and over town 
Spreads the mantle far and wide, 
And upon the feathery tide 
We, musing, gaze and think, 
And fain would try, but shrink, 
Dismayed, from the endeavor 
To fix the thoughts that ever 
Float with each falling flake 
Down to our hearts, and wake 
Emotions there which we can never utter. 



SNO W- FLAKES. 6 7 

O'er the dusky sky- 
Spread the curtains dun, 

From our eyes that veil 
The sun. 

Not as in summer they 

Swift over heaven's way 
Fly; 

Not as in noonday bright 

Shimmer the streamers white, 
High, 

But with leaden hue and pale, 

Like the countenance whose tale 
Is of a sorrow-burdened heart that's breaking. 

Like the craven's face, 

Where terror hath its place, 
Whose very coward soul with fear is quaking 

And affright, 

Lowers the noonday night, 
And the whole canopy of heaven is making 

One mass of pallid gloom, 

Vague as the shadowy tomb, 
Ghastly and blank 
Where whelmed in fold on fold the fainting sunlight 

sank. 

But beyond the murk 

Of cloudland gray and chill, 
Where lurk 

In their caverns still 
Darkness and sorrow waiting for their prey, 
Lie the bright realms above of the day, 
Where the grand solar rays 
In a glorious blaze 



68 THE AMBUSCADE. 

Drive away, 

Into myriad rainbows blending, 

By their furious descending, 
Every fog sprite dim that dares dispute their sway, 

In their consuming love of conquering power; 

While rings each hour 

Through the azure empyrean 

Loudly their exulting pasan, 
Though not to man 'tis given to comprehend their lay. 
1865. 



THE AMBUSCADE. 

Gloomily, murkily, 

Menacing dread, 
Lowers the shroud of dun ; 
Gone is the lurid sun ; 
Cheerless the waters run, 

Pale as the dead. 

Solemnly, bodingly 

Floweth the tide, 
Murmuring a lonely sound, 
Heard in the hush around. 
Hearken ! from yonder mound 

Whippoorwill cried. 

Shrilly the katydids 
Scream from the trees. 

Frogs in the river's edge 

Croak to the rustling sedge. 

Fearful in bush and hedge 
Rustles the breeze. 



THE AMBUSCADE. 69 

Softly the voices float, 

Float to the shore ; 
Like a forgotten tone, 
Waking in midnight lone, 
Momently heard and known, 

Lost evermore. 

Louder the voices grow 

Out on the deep. 
Nearer and yet more nigh 
On to their doom they hie, 
Nearer and yet more nigh, — 

Long be their sleep. 

Leaving the river's bank, 

Groping the road, 
Pass they the bushy stream, 
Dark as a murderer's dream. 
Ghastly its pallid gleam 

Glimmered and flowed. 

Thunders a sudden crash 

Close, close at hand ; 
Flash thirty guns hard by: 
And, with a horrid cry, 
Thirty forms, rising nigh, 

Rush on the band. 

One by one there they fell, 

Fell as they stood, 
Hemmed by their circling foes, 
Slaughtered in deadly close 
(Wildly the yells arose), 

Fell in their blood ! 
7 



7° 



THE AMBUSCADE. 

One by one fell they all, 

Staining the sod. 
There in the nightly hall, 
Hard by the woodland wall, 
Darkness their only pall, 

Seen but by God. 

Peacefully, sunnily, 
Blossom their graves, 

Under the willow-stem. 

Softly its requiem 

Sighs the old stream for them, 
Murmur its waves. 

'Still is the tale by the 

Cabin-door told. 
Grouped in the moonlight they 
Speak of red border fray, 
Worthy of martial lay, — 

Wild deeds and bold. 

Solemnly all the pines 

Wave overhead. 
Swaying the rifted boughs, 
Sadly the night-wind flows, 
Breathing a dirge for those 

Now with the dead. 



1866. 



THE SUNBURST OF ERIN. 71 



THE SUNBURST OF ERIN. 

Far from the land of your boyhood's wild pleasure, 

Sorrowing exiles, ah, why do you rest ? 
Beautiful Erin, your heart's long-lost treasure, 
Welcomes her wanderers home to her breast. 
Over the sea comes her voice softly flowing, 
Wafted by breezes triumphantly blowing, 
Telling that soon on her fields shall be glowing 
Erin's bright sunburst, the flag of the free. 
Erin's bright sunburst, the glorious sunburst, 
Erin's bright sunburst, the flag of the free. 

What though Britannia's insolent minions 
Shout o'er her fall in derision and joy? 
Freedom has furled not her conquering pinions; 

Still lives the spirit that saved Fontenoy. 
Still by the cabin is told Limerick's story, 
And how on the battlements lurid and gory, 
Bright o'er the fray like a meteor's glory, 
Shone Erin's sunburst, the flag of the free. 
Erin's bright sunburst, the glorious sunburst, 
Erin's bright sunburst, the flag of the free. 

Hark ! the brave martyrs of conflict and scaffold, 
Slain for the cause of your beautiful land, 

Exiled O'Connell the ruined and baffled, 
Emmet and all of the patriot band, 

Summon you o'er the Atlantic's blue water. 

Haste as the eagle that scents the red slaughter ; 

Fight the old foe as your ancestors fought her ; 



72 



SABBA TH. 



Up with the sunburst, the flag of the free. 
Erin's bright sunburst, the glorious sunburst, 
Erin's bright sunburst, the flag of the free. 

Soon the wronged island shall take her proud station, 
Freedom's first vanguard on Europe's wide coast; 

Youngest of lands, yet victorious nation, 

Humbling proud England's contemptuous boast. 

Then shall the star of the ocean be splendid, 

And Erin's glad soul, by long thraldom unbended, 

Mount in hosannas, her servitude ended, 

Round her bright sunburst, the flag of the free. 
Erin's bright sunburst, victorious sunburst, 
Erin's bright sunburst, the flag of the free. 
1866. 

SABBATH. 

How sweetly solemn is the day of rest ! 

When Nature seems in sympathy to smile 

With man, now freed from daily care and toil ; 
And her eternal sabbath, to his breast 

So oft denied admittance, enters there 

And soothes him to her own divine repose. 
From yonder spire that o'er the foliage shows 

Swells the glad anthem on the sunny air 
With a faint, rapturous cadence ; a light breeze 
Croons interruptedly through scattered trees 

That shade the greensward decked with wild-flowers 
rare, 
The haunts of butterflies and murmuring bees ; 

And Nature in the spring-time fresh and fair 
Seems worshipping upon her bended knees. 

1866. 



THE TEMPLE OF AIR. 



73 



THE TEMPLE OF AIR. 

(a summer fancy.) 

Above the clouds lies the temple of air, 
A dwelling of beauty serene and fair, 
Free from the thraldom of gloomy night, 
Where an intricate web of living light 
Spreads in tremulous splendor round, 

And fairies dance on the tangled skein. 
With tiny voices and gladsome bound 

They exult undisturbed in their airy reign. 
A thousand beautiful varied dyes 

Brilliantly spread the transparent floor ; 
And the sunset's roseate glory lies 

In curtaining drapery o'er and o'er. 
Far, far below, through the rifted clouds, 

The distant visions of earth appear, 
Its insect bustle and ant-like crowds, 

With alternate impulse of hope or fear. 
Above is the dome where the diamond stars 

Lie scattered like grain from the sower's hand; 
Its pillars Aurora's golden bars 

That in changeful luxuriant splendor stand. 
Oft through its mazes the meteor's fire 

Flashes and glares down the long columned aisles; 
And the gossamer foam-cloud's evanishing spire 

Rises mellow and dim 'mid perennial smiles. 
7* 



74 



STANZAS FROM "ERIC; 



When the ocean in fury is tossing below, 

And the fiends of the storm fill the ear with their 
cries, 
And the darkness that rose from the West sadly slow 

Now whelms in black horror the night-burdened 
skies, 
Then far, far above in the temple of air, 

In that dwelling of beauty serenely sweet, 
Peace waves to the zephyrs her streaming hair 

And the fairies dance with their tinkling feet. 

1866. 



STANZAS FROM "ERIC." 

Adown Potomac's stream the vessel glides 

Swiftly as arrow from the slackened bow, 
Bathes in receding streams her swelling sides, 

And cleaves the surface with her foam-washed prow. 

Far, far behind the city clusters now, 
A shapeless mass all but yon noble dome, 

Upon whose snowy slope the sunlight's glow 
Dwells brightly, Freedom's temple and her home, 
The grander capital of a more powerful Rome. 

Lo ! yon unsightly shaft, whose corner-stone 

Was laid in proud memorial of the man, 
The only man whose aims were not his own, 

In God's great work a worthy artisan. 

His was the sword that glittered o'er the van 
In that first conflict which prepared the way 

For all that since has followed. He could scan 
The clouds that gloomed Columbia's future day, 
And woe betide the hour his counsel lost its sway ! 



STANZAS FROM « ERIC: 



75 



Like thine, my country, its foundations were 
Laid compact and immovable. The toil 

Of busy workmen raised with progress sure, 

Though slow, like thine, the grandly graceful pile, 
And men looked on with an approving smile : 

And all was well. There came at length an hour 
When warning's voice was heard not, and the guile 

Of railing tongues embroiled the nation's power. 

The half-built monument was left the tempest's dower. 

Its fate and thine on the same cause depend, 

And in the past the same results we see. 
His counsel, followed, may avert the end 

That menaces thy hard-won liberty. 

It stands the index of thy destiny. 
When high it towers, a pinnacle of snow, 

Spotless shall be thy robes, thy people free ; 
When dwarfed and foul the shaft, so thou shalt grow. 
Its rise foretells thy power ; its fall thy overthrow. 

Within thy compass city old yet young, 

Old in thy history yet young in years, 
Full many a scene worthy of poet's song, 

And suited well to rapture or to tears, 

Have I beheld. Before my sight appears 
The hurried bustling of an anxious crowd 

Down black-draped avenues, each visage wears 
A shade of horror, curses deep and loud 
Are uttered on the hand before which Lincoln bowed. 

Another, and an earlier, scene I view. 

Horsemen dash furiously to and fro, 
With clattering swords and uniforms of blue, 

While sturdily tramping o'er the pavement go 



7 6 STANZAS FROM "ERIC" 

Small bands of infantry, whose columns show- 
Hues more diverse, though still the blue prevails: 

For round about the town encamp the foe, 
And doubtfully have swayed the battle's scales. 
Around from mouth to mouth fly Rumor's fearful tales. 

Again, flags on the roofs are waving high, 
And hands from balconies. A solid mass 

Of soldiery press on exultingly 

Below. As through the myriads they pass 
Cheer follows cheer. The line no ending has 

In East or West discernible. The blare 

Of trumpets and the drum's tremendous bass, 

And fife's shrill jubilant music fill the air, 

And in soul-stirring concord mingle grandly there. 

Thus flew his thought on various errand bent, 

Back o'er the trail that leads to days gone by, 
Nor noted how the sinking city blent 

With the faint hillocks and the fainter sky. 

At last it vanished from his straining eye. 
Half joyful then, half sad, he turned away ; 

For the true charms of firm reality 
Leaving the mystic frost-work vague and gray, 
Which Memory weaves to melt in the warm flush of day. 

Right blithe indeed was all the scene around ; 

On either shore waved Autumn's bannerets, 
And the high bluffs the northern view that bound 

Were glorious as the sun is when he sets. 
Gulls circle ; swallows skim j a light breeze frets 
The water's sparkling surface; here and there 

Sails in the sun show whitely ; constant jets 



STANZAS FROM « ERIC 



77 



Of spray the active wheels fling in the air — 

And Eric's heart in Nature's guileless joy could share 

A pillared mansion built in massive form, 

Framed in a glare of reddening autumn leaves, 

On the round hill-top meeting sun and storm 
Midway toward their sources. Fancy weaves, 
Old manse, a halo round thee. Here the sheaves 

Of that rich harvest which the world has reaped 
Grew into golden fulness. 'Neath yon eaves 

That mind from point to point progressive leaped, 

Then in one mighty rush to fame's first vanguard 
sweeped. 

Mount Vernon, the world owes a debt to thee 

It never can obliterate or repay. 
For spots like these, high-towering grand and free, 

Free to the eye's far range, the wind's wild play, 

Where the thrilled spirit swells beyond its clay, 
These are the places meet to fashion souls 

That may aspire to more than monarch's sway. 
Few such there are : too much the town controls, 
Cramps, dwarfs, giving only part. Here Nature all 
unrolls. 

What joyance ruled in yonder spacious halls 
When Fairfax's grace presided o'er the board, 

O'erlooking from his mansion's new-built walls 
Full many a fruitful mile outstretching broad, 
And garneries with grain to bursting stored ! 

A generous life, no doubt, of hearty cheer, 
Well suited to the jovial olden lord 

Who left his English home to sojourn here, 

And still with wine and feast helped round the merry 
year. 



78 STANZAS FROM "ERIC" 

Few traits there are that so attract our gaze 
In all that shows Britannia's real worth 

Than this same soulful homely fireside blaze 
That flickers still about her dim-grown hearth, 
That honest heartiness of joy and mirth 

Which made of life one careless holiday, 

Enjoyed earth's good while living on the earth, 

Nor deemed it sin to frolic and be gay. 

Our motherland, dear is she still, — thrice dear alway. 

Nor is it banished yet from Western shores. 

Throughout Virginia's impoverished lands 
Still sons of cavaliers keep open doors, 

Still welcome tightens in their glowing hands 

For all who will be friends : and — glebe or sands — 
Whate'er the soil produces theirs shall be. 

Are these a people worthy despot's bands ? 
There still the huntsmen scour across the lea ; 
There still before the hounds does fearful Reynard flee. 

Nor are the colder Northern firesides void 

Of all that brightens life and makes it fair. 
Fearless and firm and stern in manly pride, 

God's noblest handiwork is fashioned there. 

The grand old Puritanic mind they share, — 
Gloomily grand, like some forbidding tower, 

Whose windows scarce admit the outer glare ; 
Softened by wizard Time's transforming power. 
And, given in joy, their hand remains though tempests 
lower. 

Here, too, in later years a soldier came, 

Bowed by a venerable load of years, 
A foreigner in nothing but the name, 

And welcomed to our land with smiles and tears, 



STANZAS FROM "ERIC" 79 

To view the cause he served in doubts and fears 
At last, triumphant, take its final stand, 

Like Joseph's sheaf among the bending ears, 
The shrine of homage from each ancient land, 
And destined high o'er all to raise its forehead grand. 

Loved Lafayette, thy name has sacred grown, 

One of fair Freedom's priceless heritages. 
It needs no monumental sculptured stone 

To fix its place in all succeeding ages. 

And ever when the red sirocco rages, 
And all that dignifies our human kind 

Seems shrivelled in the blast, and bards and sages, 
Statesmen and warriors, shrunk to petty mind, 
In thy self-sacrificing soul new hope we find. 

New faith in the angelic soul of man ; 

New faith in purposes serene and high ; 
In that original celestial plan 

Of grander power and nobler purity, 

Deep as the ocean, lofty as the sky. 
A gem half-dimmed within the earthy mine, 

Gladdening, with all its flaws, the pitying eye, 
That scorns to sneer, and longs to see it shine 
In perfect blaze — nor would for worlds that hope resign. 

There's something in these mighty fluid masses, 

Sleeping 'mid scenes with sylvan beauty rife, 
Or roaring madly down the mountain passes, 

That bears resemblance to our human life. 

Onward the current sweeps un vexed by strife, 
Till some huge obstacle bars further way ; 

Where jagged rocks divide it like a knife, 
Flanked by huge bulwarks pitiless and gray j 
Then roars its awful voice, far flies the scattering spray. 



80 STANZAS FROM " ERIC" 

And such a spot I know, and there have wandered, 
Broad bright Potomac, by thy rock-strewn side, 

To watch thy wondrous power — not idly squandered — 
That effort's vast momentum lends thy tide 
Fresh speed through all its course — and have allied 

A little of thy energy to mine, 

Indrawn as from a font ; and, spreading wide 

Above, have viewed thy glassy expanse shine, 

By verdurous islets gemmed, like emeralds round a 
shrine. 

And now he views an uninviting scene. 

Acquia's marshes stretch on either hand, 
A broad expanse of water lies between, 

Shallow and turbid, where, decaying, stand 

Long straggling lines of piles, toward the land 
Outstretching ; and the circling hills are bare, 

Bleak, and low-lying. At their chief's command, 
The marshalled waterfowl troop by in air, 
And blackbirds swarm in clouds to gain their reedy 
fare. 



Bright Eden-nooks of scarlet fern and weeds 

And parti-colored grasses glancing by, 
Scarce seen ere vanished. Stunted corn succeeds, 

And swampy woodlands race across the eye. 

A constant change without variety ! 
An utter quiet undisturbed by sound, 

Save the swift rumble and the jarring cry ! 
The dizzy distance wheeling round and round, — 
Lo ! here once more we stand on new-made classic 
ground. 



STANZAS FROM "ERIC" 8 1 

Two fronting ridges leave a vale between, 
Adown whose centre Rappahannock flows, 

Skirting the town. A field, no longer green, 

Slopes thither from the hills. 'Twas here the foes 
Met in that dread December, when uprose 

The starry banner, but to fall again 

Amid the storm-swept ruin. All the woes 

Horror lends strife were there. With mangled men, 

Torn staggering from the ranks, each volley strewed 
the plain. 

Marye's curved crest a flaming furnace glowed. 

Around it, o'er it, hung a sulphurous cloud. 
Flames drove, incessant, through, and the whole air 
sowed 

With raging grapeshot. As the billows crowd, 

Storm-driven, against a torrent's mouth, so flowed 
The tide of soldiery toward the hill : 

Though backward borne by the dread stream that 
mowed 
Thousands to earth, yet surging onward still, 
With wild and fierce desire and tumult loud and shrill. 

And this is only one of many fields 

Where Death has sown his seed and reaped his grain. 
A plenteous harvest his plantation yields. 

From Appalachia's rugged mountain chain 

To where the rivers mingle with the main 
Virginia's soil is fertilized by gore : 

Each hill, each stream, commemorates the slain. 
Man's monuments lie wrecked on field and shore ; 
But those that mark his follies stand for evermore. 

^ •%. if: ^ * •%. ^t 

8 



82 STANZAS FROM "ERIC." 

Adown a roadway flanked by stately elms, 
Across a garden on the hillock's brow — 

And there behold : where once his savage realms 
Old Powhatan surveyed, remaineth now 
But yonder stone to mark his overthrow. 

There lay the captive's fated head, and there 
Knelt the chief's daughter by her helpless foe, 

Bright with the spirit's beauty, bright, not fair. 

The ruthless arm upswung stopped powerless 
air. 

Bright gleams the river's expanse, bright the sky- 
Stretches in boundless fields of perfect blue. 

How soft yon emerald meadows to the eye ! 
How mellow yonder cornfield's golden hue ! 
As yonder mock-bird tunes his song anew, 

How all the air with music thrills again ! 
Yet not a charm that blossoms on the view 

Can match that glorious vision of the brain, 

Nor earthly music vie with Mercy's heavenly strain. 



Success, a worthy god for deathless minds ! 

The creature of fortuitous circumstance 
Or others' unrequited toil, which finds 

All finished, saving only to enhance 

(Or mar) what they have done, — to the world's 
glance 
Invisible, — or friendly aiding hand, 

Random endeavor, craft, or crime, perchance. 
A worthy god ! — But still this truth shall stand, — 
Than a grand failure earth holds nought more truly 
grand. 



ARKADI. 



83 



And woe to those who pin their faith on praise, 

And strive to catch the bubble ere it burst 
Or fly to other hands ! What though the rays 

With matchless splendor captivate at first ? 

False is that brightness, fickle and accurst. 
But well for him whose mountain mind can tower 

Above the tumult and despise the thirst, — 
Existing far beyond the present hour : 
A worthier meed shall be that steadfast spirit's dower. 

For he that represents a principle, 

And in his strong conviction breasts the shock 
Of all opposing powers of earth and hell, 

Holding this firm, though empires reel and rock; 

And men and demons crowd to fleer and mock ; 
And friends join foemen in malicious schemes ; 

When Lethe swallows all the ignoble flock, 
Then round his head celestial radiance gleams ; 
And each succeeding age adds more transcendent 
beams. 

1866-1867. 



ARKADI. 

Verdant are Candia's olives, 
Yellow her fields of corn, 

No vineyards are more fruitful, 
No whiter sheep are shorn, 

No land has lovelier vistas, 
No land has clearer skies, 

And far or near on isle or plain 
No happier homes arise. 



84 ARKADI. 

But now the leafy olives 

Are lying all supine, 
And crushed and matted on the earth 

Is every purple vine, 

The flocks have left the fields, 
The corn is charred and dry, 

The smoke of flaming villages 
Rolls black against the sky ; 

For Turkish hordes are ranging 
The country far and wide, 

Nor blade of grass, nor living thing, 
Survives that deadly tide. 

On, on they moved, and hour by hour 

Nearer and nearer came, 
And nearer still to Arkadi 

Rose each successive flame, 

To Arkadi, where Gabriel 

Stood lion -like at bay. 
He might not seek, yet scorned to shun, 

The fury of the fray. 

His hair was long and gray \ 
His beard was snowy white ; 

Beneath his wrinkled brow 

His eyes glowed darkly bright ; 

His robe of monkish black 

Floated about his form, 
As the cloudland draperies float around 

The spirit of the storm. 



ARKADI. 85 

Some said he was not reared 

To a monk's inglorious ease, 
For his majestic tread 

Was learned beyond the seas, 

Where that commanding form 

Had faced the Turk before, 
When his arm of might 
In the fierce red light 

Gleamed purple with Moslem gore. 

With him was rugged Zagon, 

He of the Thousand Hills : 
Ne'er had the conquering Moslem 

Drunk of their crystal rills. 

He kept, as kept his fathers, 

His native mountains free, 
Obeyed no mandate but his own, 

No law but liberty. 

From those blue Sphakiote mountains 

Down with his tribe he came, 
When first the trampled island 

Burst into wrathful flame j 

On Turk and on Egyptian 

Waged desultory war, — 
In all the land there was not a brand 

Had left so many a scar. 

There, too, came young Camouilli 

Of old Venetian blood. 
Ah ! where was his home ancestral 

That towered o'er field and flood? 
8* 



S6 ARKADI. 

A mass of smouldering ruin ! 

The tomb of a murdered sire ! — 
What wonder his soul was glowing 

With a mighty and quenchless ire? 

And Manius of Suda, 

A merchant of the town, 
Demetrius the Athenian, 

And Scharz the blacksmith brown, 

And many a sturdy yeoman, 
And many a mountaineer, 

And many a monk, with cowl and robe 
And crucifix, were there. 

Then from Mustapha Pacha 
The haughty summons came : 

No choice he left his foemen 
Save only death or shame. 

And Gabriel returned him 
The answer proud and stern : 

" Whate'er thou hast of Arkadi 
Thy red right hand must earn." 

So when the stars shone brightly, 
And the winds blew underneath, 

All slept the sleep of silence, 
But some the sleep of death. 

The sun has risen, the circling camps 

Are all astir with life, 
And on to the assault they move, 

On to the deadly strife. 



A R KADI. 87 

The turbaned mass swept round the hill, 

Then, yelling, upward pressed. 
Like sparks of fire the bayonets gleamed, 
North, South, and East all sunset-streamed, 

Like diamonds, at the West. 

As from some cavern-like cloud 

Leaps the red lightning forth, 
Flash upon flash, and here and there 

Smites forest-trees to earth : 

So from that lofty crest 

Down streamed the rapid fire, 
And scattered through the ascending ranks 

Death and confusion dire. 

But thousands upon thousands 

Came surging on behind, 
And the foremost ranks were borne along 

Like clouds before the wind : 

They dashed against the whitened walls 

Like waves against a rock, 
Which, towering high mid stormy seas, 

Defies their utmost shock. 

They leaped to catch the windows, 

But tumbled back in gore ; 
They struggled at the loopholes, 

They thundered at the door. 

But the hard iron-bossed beams 

Yielded not to their ire, 
And ever fiercer, deadlier grew 

The Christians' ceaseless fire. 



S8 ARKADL 

And thrice the Turks before it 

Wavered and turned and fled, 
But rallying half-way down the slope, 

Came trampling o'er the dead. 

At last their furious onslaught 

Forced the door open wide, 
And through the entrance in they poured 

A mad, exultant tide. 

Then all the spacious court-yard 

Was filled with tossing heads, 
And arms high waving in the air, 
And groan and yell and shriek and cheer 
Made such an awful discord there, 
That Hell itself, that sound to hear, 
Had yielded up each shape of fear 

That wizard knows and dreads. 

But still through all the deafening roar 
Of musketry rose more and more 

In one grand stormy stream. 
For from the casements all around 
Shot the red flashes, and the ground 
Was strewn with dead. Each ghastly mound 
Fresh victims climbed. No entrance found, 

Their bayonets lurid gleam. 

Crash go the doors ! and on and on 
They rush from room to room ; 

And louder peals each echoing cry 

Of rage and pain and agony 
From out the sulphurous gloom. 



A R KADI. 89 

Zagon has fallen ; never more 
His native mountains rising o'er 

The sun shall greet his eyes. 
Camouilli by the hero's side, 
With death-wounds gaping deep and wide, 

In speechless agony lies. 

Thus, reeling back, the Cretans fell 

Before the Moslem throng, 
That, like a foaming torrent, swept 

All barriers along. 

Yes, as a torrent whirls along 

The slenderest wattled screen 
Their desperate foemen on they swept, 
And on, still on the Moslem kept ; 
They neared the magazine. 

But what has checked that furious rush ? 

What dread sight meets their gaze ? 
Why blanches every swarthy cheek 

With terror and amaze ? 

There in the centre of the room 

Behold Gabriel stand. 
His eyes are raised to heaven, and, lo ! 

A torch flames in his hand. 

A strange high look was on his brow ; 

His eyes unearthly gleamed ; 
And every lineament aglow 

With a grand triumph seemed. 



9° 



ARKADL 

Thrice round his head he waved that torch, 

Then plunged it at his feet, 
And rose to his full height, as though 

To give death welcome meet. 

A mighty crash shook heaven. The walls 

Rose heavily in air, 
And mangled limbs and volumed smoke 

Mingled in chaos there. 

Earth quaked to hear the awful sound, 

The forest monarchs swayed. 
Far, far around o'er all the plain 
Showered the dense volcanic rain, 
The Moslem remnant fled amain, 

All pallid and dismayed. 

Long shall Mustapha Pacha 

Bewail his slaughtered men, 
For such another gallant host 

He ne'er shall lead again. 

And where the Balkan torrents 

In turbid fury roar, 
And where the Nile's dark waters 

Sweep onward to the shore, 

Where Adrianople's roses 

Bloom bright for many a mile, 

Where in the East reposes 
The Cyprian goddess' isle, 

Through all the broad dominions 

That own the Sultan's sway, 
On land and sea great grief shall be 

For the deed done that day. 



ARKADI. 

Well may ye grieve, proud Moslem, 

Well may ye weep and wail, 
For all through Candia's valleys 

Has gone the stirring tale. 

The bold feel treble valor, 

The wavering are stayed, 
The weak grow strong, the sluggards wake 
And grasp for martyred Gabriel's sake 

The idly-rusting blade. 

No more the land of Minos 

Your cursed dominion hails ; 
Henceforth a home of freedom 

Shall greet the Orient gales. 

The paradise Levantine, 

The godlike heroes' isle, 
Set in the wave without a slave, 

Once more shall bloom and smile. 

Once more united Greece shall be, 
First in the van of liberty, 
And when of old Thermopylae 

Is told the glorious fray, 
With equal rapture shall they dwell 
Upon the name of Gabriel, 
And with as great a pride shall tell 

Of the deed done that day. 



9* 



1867. 



9 2 THE NIGHT-HAWK. 



THE NIGHT-HAWK. 

When evening shades are coming on apace, 

And lengthening traceries sway across the ground, 
Where phantom branches dimly interlace, 

And cool, sad silence reigns o'er all around, 
Sad, but not sombre, far less sad than sweet, 

The sweet sad silence of departing day, 
When swallows, darting down the quiet street, 

Twitter and play ; 

Then in the dusk I view thy distant form, 

Skimming across the darkened fields of air, 
Drinking the breath of yonder muttering storm, 

Chasing the sunset to its golden lair. 
And now full shrilly sounds thy piercing cry, 

Far, far beyond the compass of my sight, 
Amid the deepening blackness of the sky, 

Bird of the night. 

Not like the lazy owl that sits and mourns 

With dolorous voice the dreary midnight hour, 
Or through the woodland flits with cumbrous turns, 

And tears the sleeping victims of his power. 
Not like the falcon, bold alone in day, 

When all is clear and beautiful and bright ; 
Through gloom and glory lies thy dauntless way, 

Bird of the night. 

There's something in my soul akin to thee 
That loves the gloaming better than the glare, 

And joys to skim the clouds of mystery, 
Diving as deep as mortal mind may dare. 



THE UNDERTONE. 93 

And, howsoe'er it be, I love thee well, 

And ne'er, unmoved, can view thy airy flight, 

Nor hear thy distant voice its triumph tell, 
Bird of the night. 

1867. 



THE UNDERTONE. 

When the hills are white with snow 
And the woods all brown between, 

When the winds have a voice of woe 
And the sunlight a frosty sheen, 

Up from the river-side, 

Up from the lone deep vale, 
Where the wintry waters glide 

Past the willow-isle's icy trail, 

Where yon huge chimneys stand, 

. Whence the flame-based smoke rolls high, 
And the merry sparkles, fanned 
By the wind, in tumult fly, 

Rises a clash and a clang, 

Rises a tumult and roar ; 
The song that the Titans sang 

Resounds by the river-shore. 

But ever and ever swells 

An undertone strong and low, 
That dwells and dwells and dwells 

In one continual flow. 
9 



94 JEPHTHAH THE OUTLAW. 

Not with the cheery ring 
Of the steel upon the stone, 

Not as the sad waves sing 

Through boughs despoiled and lone, 

But with stern voice yet benign, 
Like the swell of a heaving sea, 

Its soul breathes into mine 
A grander melody. 

And deep within my spirit 
I catch the self-same tone ; 

Through life's long din I hear it 
Steadily sounding on. 

And I joy in that music grand, 
Passionless, earnest, high ; 

For I know that a Higher hand 
Has attuned that melody. 
1867. 



JEPHTHAH THE OUTLAW. 

The outlaw's cavern was a lonely place 

And wild, deep set within the mountain side ; 

Whose rocks, clean-swept by summer torrents, hung, 

Toppling, about its mouth, and strewed the vale, 

Through which a river glided lazily, 

Gleaming through openings in its verdurous bounds. 

Upon the sward that sloped below the cave, 

Where Syrian date-trees dropped their isles of shade, 



JEPHTHAH THE OUTLAW, 95 

Were grouped the habitants of this rude realm : 

A hardy, reckless race, of motley garb 

And varied arms, and visages that told 

Of fiery, vengeful natures, now relaxed 

To merriment and ease, as round the jest, 

Or tale of danger braved or booty won, 

Or darker recital of olden wrongs, 

Not unredressed, though unforgotten, passed.. 

Apart from all the noisy crowd he sat 

Where a cool springlet issued from the earth, 

Half leaning with his elbow on a stone, 

His head upon his hand. His garb, though soiled, 

Still showed its former richness, and the gold 

Which graced a year agone a city's chief 

Still shone in tarnished lustre on his scarf. 

A turban torn from off a desert prince 

(The work of distant Cashmere's matchless looms) 

Rested upon his brow ; and in his belt 

A jewelled dagger of Sidonian make 

As brightly shone as ere it left the girdle 

Of its Philistian master. 

Huge in form 
And fitted to endure endless fatigue 
He seemed ; and in his firm-set mouth and beard 
Of wiry iron-gray you well might read 
The dauntless resolution of the man 
And tireless energy. His massive forehead 
Rose clear and high above his well-arched brows, 
And the deep branching lines that gathered there 
Told of the life-long struggle, and the pride 
That could not easily forgive a wrong, 
And would not stoop to mean servility. 



9 6 JEPHTHAH THE OUTLAW. 

But in his eyes a dull abiding pain 

Seemed to look forth, as though there glowed and 

glowed, 
Deep in his inmost soul, the thought of all 
He might have been : for surely there he felt 
The innate stamp and seal of majesty. 
But driven forth from native land and friends, 
Branded with ignominy not his own 
(And a hard bitterness seized on his soul 
At the thought), barred all social intercourse, 
And, worse than all, ambition's noblest aims, 
Was it a wonder that his patriotism 
Had turned to direst hatred, and his love 
Of all mankind to scorn and wrath, until, 
Like Ishmael of old, he only knew 
His race as enemies ? 

Yet in this wild 
Unfettered life he had found a kind of joy, 
As the freed eagle finds, when from his cage 
He soars up proudly to his native heaven. 
This and the charm of gratified revenge, 
Wherein fierce minds like his take strange delight, 
And the great fame, though bad, which he had won 
(For far and wide through all the Syrian lands 
Were Jephthah's daring deeds of prowess told, 
And the tired warders of the caravan 
Scarce dared to rest without the city's walls 
For fear of that bold robber of the hills), 
Had made him oft the merriest of the crew, 
And loved the more for mingling with them thus. 

This in his earlier years. But as he grew 
In age, the romance seemed to leave his life, 



WHITHER ARE WE DRIFTING? 97 

And the hard labor and the strife remained. 
And he could see the black unblessed end, 
When those who feared could safely scoff at him, 
And those who loved would fain deny his name. 
Nor had time failed to bring its load of grief: 
Yonder upon the hill-side lay the grave 
Of his wife Amra, loveliest of the land, 
Who followed him in his sad exodus 
Into the desert, shared his hardships there, 
Joined in his plans, but checked his cruelty : 
And losing whom he had lost half his soul. 

No kindred now remained to him save those 
Whose ties were burst by long-continued hate, 
And one beside, a fair and fragile flower, 
Fearless as fair, of soft persuasive voice 
And merry mien though gentle : hating wrong, 
And loving good for its own holy sake : 
Pure-souled as the far mountain lake, whose breast, 
Unchanged itself, reflects the changing heaven,— 
Nestling the fleecy cloudlet, or the storm 
Sublimely painting, or the starry night 
In its sweet melancholy rivalling. 
1867. 



WHITHER ARE WE DRIFTING? 

Once our course was joyful, full of peace and pleasure. 
Lightly blew the breezes, gayly danced the ripples, 
Sparkling in the sunlight, flashing out like diamonds, 
And the scattered islets slept in emerald beauty. 
From the banks beside us flowerets waved their greeting, 
Nodding in the zephyrs, breathing perfumed blessings ; 



9 8 WHITHER ARE WE DRIFTING? 

And the pines and cedars and the oaks and elm-trees, 
Poplars, hollies, laurels, crooned in varied voices 
All their glad contentment : like Eolus harpstrings, 
Sounding angel music through the halls of slumber. 
And the swallow's twitter and the robin's whistle 
And the merry mock-bird all conjoined to greet us, 
As we speeded onward under the hot sunlight, 
Shining down in splendor on our happy progress. 
Then our course was joyful. 

But through all our pleasure came a nameless terror, 
Came a dread of something that we could not fathom, 
Creeping in our spirits, rising, swelling, spreading, 
Like a distant storm-cloud, spite of all resistance. 

O the storm and crashing ! O the raving tempest ! 
And the streams of lightning heralding the thunder ! 
And the jagged rock-points, piercing through the piling 
Of the foam and frothing ! And the driving spray- 
drops ! 
And the horrid roaring ! And the demon darkness ! 
And the dreadful rocking, shocking every moment 
On some hidden terror ! 

And the baleful gleaming of the ghastly waters ! 
Ghastly in their whiteness, awful in their blackness ! 
O the crash and terror ! 

Whither are we drifting? 
Far behind, the rapids, roaring, foaming, seething, 
Dimly through the moonlight gleam as in a vision, 
And the rocks are closing narrowly about them. 
Still the tattered raiment of the cloud impinges 
O'er our destined foreheads. Still the torrent round us 



WHITHER ARE WE DRIFTING? gg 

Whirls and roars and rushes, eddying and sweeping. 
And the cliffs beside us, cold, gray, and relentless, 
Leave us half in shadow, half in moon and starlight. 
We can but go onward. Whither are we drifting? 

Down the way before us, where the light and shadow 
Weirdly shift and mingle, wondrous forms and visions, 
Messengers from dreamland, throng upon our gazing. 
Beatific glimpses of a world of splendor, 
Ocean stretching peaceful far beyond the horizon, 
Stately ports and havens, scenes of sylvan beauty. 
But through'all their pressing, all their constant crowd- 
ing, 
Dim and spectral figures like the forms of chaos, 
Fearful in their vagueness, wave their phantom fingers 
In a solemn warning. 

Wrecks of ruined nations lie along the borders, 
With their tattered pennons flapping sadly, slowly : 
Skeleton-like, grimly, shows their wave-washed rib- 
work, 
Half-submerged and whitened, piteous sight and awful. 
And a crowd of voices, mingling in strange jargon, — 
Howls and yells and shriekings, shouted cheers and 

blessings, 
Wild expostulations, stern and earnest warnings, 
Strains of sweetest music, peals of demon laughter, — 
From the depths before us greet our awe-struck senses. 
Whither are we drifting ? 
1867. 



THE AZTEC EMPEROR. 



THE AZTEC EMPEROR. 

Loftily towered the tropic palm ; 
Soft flowed the tropic breeze, breathing balm ; 
And the few white cloudlets that wandered by 
Over the depths of the clear blue sky, 
Showed the more plainly its purity. 

Bright pinions were flitting from bough to bough ; 
And the wood-dove's wooing-note soft and low, 
And the harsher tones of the parokeet, 
And all of the woodland chorus sweet, 
Proclaimed their joy in their little life, 
Unvexed by man's bitter and causeless strife. 

The curious lizard, with sidelong glance, 
Whisked playfully off in the gliding dance 
Through the herbage and up the trees ; 
And humming-birds hung like jewelled bees 
Lovingly over the passion-flowers 
That gloried the sides of the woodland bowers, 
Where the gladdening sun found way between 
The plantain's darkening leafy screen : 
All nature was joyous and wild and free, 
And man's alone was the misery. 

He stood alone and he stood unbound ; 
For even his captor's heart had found 
A forced respect for his noble birth 
And his nobler native kingly worth ; 



THE AZTEC EMPEROR. 101 

And added nothing of needless shame 
To his life or death to his fate or fame. 

Three-and-twenty years had rolled 
Over his forehead broad and bold ; 
Had lent a grace to his sinewy form, 
Buoyant yet hardy for sun or storm. 
No courtlier knight had Castile than he — 
This flower of Aztec chivalry. 

Here in the body, his soul had flown 

On the wings of thought to the years agone, 

When all his smiling native land 

Knew not the grasp of the Spaniard's hand, — 

To the happy days when the crown had pressed 

His brow, and the purple wrapped his breast, 

And a people followed his lightest word, 

And the might of a nation drove home his sword. 

A brief but sanguine and lurid reign, 

Like the meteor's baleful-flashing train, 

Lighting the depths of the wintry night 

With weird and spiritual light 

(Like some vexed demon wildly driven 

Across the star-sown waste of heaven), 

Then sinking to eternal rest, 

Shrouding its secret in its breast, 

And leaving nothing to us below, 

Save the doubtful shadow of coming woe. 

Day by day he had watched the foe 
Closing around doomed Mexico. 
Day by day he had urged his men 
To beat them back to their tents again. 



io2 THE AZTEC EMPEROR. 

With yells of fury they filled the air, 

Dashing aside the Spaniard's spear, 

Swarming the bows of the brigantines 

As they forced the palisaded lines, 

Tearing the rider from off his seat 

Down 'mid the charger's trampling feet, 

Heedless of suffering and of death, 

Cursing their foes with their latest breath, 

Counting but one of the men of Spain 

Reward for a hundred warriors slain ; 

Till the lake was crimsoned with wreathing blood, 

And clogged with corpses each causeway stood, 

And the gaps that yawned so deep and wide 

Scarce made a way for the sluggish tide 

That filtered slowly through heaps of dead ; 

Then streamed off with its waters dyed doubly red. 

Vainly, all vainly Anahuac's sons 

Have striven to shield the fated town, 
And now they hear the invader's guns 

Sound in the suburbs, and crashing down 
Comes house after house, and the rising yells 
Fill the air with the noise of a thousand hells, — 
The howls of the famished, the shrieks of the dying, 
The shouts of contestants, the victors, the flying, 
The groans of the trampled, in agony lying. 
And high above all the incessant wild pounding 
Of the great holy war-drum that echoing, sounding, 
Broke on the ear with its huge undulations, 
Like the voice of archangels alarming the nations. 

But alas for the lot of our lovely world ! 

Though the banner of right, by the weak unfurled, 



THE AZTEC EMPEROR. 103 

May flutter awhile in the stormy blast, 

When the winds are high and the heavens o'ercast, 

Yet, soon or late, it must sink at last. 

Patriotism stern and high, 

The deathless hate and the will to die, 

The fear for the loved ones that conquers fear, 

Were all in vain in the contest here. 

Where once the garden and villa smiled 

Roamed the coyote lean and wild, 

And the lordly seat of the Aztec sway 

One waste of level ruins lay, 

Stretching for miles and miles away ; 

And the last of its people, a feeble band, 

With lustreless eye and bony hand, 

And flagging step and dejected mien, 

Took their way from the dismal scene ; 

Yet stopped to gaze with a last fond view 

On the shattered home that their childhood knew. 

Not the low holly, but the oak, 

Feels the swift lightning's direful stroke. 

And so the avarice and hate 

Which laid his country desolate, — 

Joined to all shadowy shapes within 

That throng the horrid court of sin, 

And those of purer origin, 

Which sometimes bask in heavenly light 

And sometimes sink to double night, — 

Had left to his wasted fields the hind 

And centred their wrath on the master-mind. 

The noisome cell, the slavish toil, 
The bed of fire, the seething oil, 



io4 



THE AZTEC EMPEROR. 



Had been by turns his lot to share. 
But the fierce pangs of his despair 
No outward shape or semblance took 
Save the fixed, concentrated look, 
Where all the ire of an injured soul 
i\.nd all the pangs it would fain control 
Stream through the deepening eye and show 
The inner universal glow. 

And now, behold, his captors come, — 

No flaunting pennons, no booming drum, — 

Stained and battered and sunburnt brown 

As the autumn leaves that come circling down ! 

Their weapons glanced in the sunny light, 

And greeted with silvery gleam the sight 

From the depth of the shadows' checkered night, 

But nought about them, save these, was bright. 

A something darkens each veteran brow, 
And something hushes their accents now, 
For a warrior's worth full well they know, 
And valor they prize in friend or foe, 
And little they love their part to play 
In the vile business of the day. 

Sombre and stern and without a sound 
They form a circle the captive round, 
A fence of bristling, glittering steel. 
Afar in the shade of the plantains kneel 
Dusky forms to the Sun-God high, 
Who glares in anger from the sky, 
Or gaze erect upon the scene 
With sorrowing yet indignant mien ; 



THE AZTEC EMPEROR. 

While Tlascalans in laughing groups 
Watch, nearer by, the Spanish troops. 

But in the inner rank were they 

Whose forming was of nobler clay, 

And some, in truth, who well might claim 

The meed of an undying fame. 

The hero of the causeway fight, 

Last to flee in the dreadful night 

When the heavens above and the earth below 

Rang with the yells of the maddened foe, 

And Hispania's bravest found a grave 

In the dun canal or the lake's dark wave, — 

Alvarado the lithe of limb, 

Genial in wassail, in combat grim, 

Turning aside, leaned on his spear, — 

Shame reddened the visage that knew not fear. 

Gonzalo beside him looked eagerly on ; 
In his dull dark eye a triumph shone. 
In his grizzled cheeks and his lowering brow 
Gloats pleased revenge, he has kept his vow. 
His brother, who fell at Cholula's fray, 
Is avenged by an emperor's blood to-day. 

Alvarez the priest cared nought for these, 
Nor foe to slaughter, nor friend to please. 
His mission to bear from land to land 
The crucifix that graced his hand. 
Well, well for those who received the sign ! 
For those who refused it, wrath divine. 
And what if terrestrial pangs were given 
To force on the soul the joys of heaven ? 



io5 



io 6 THE AZTEC EMPEROR. 

Cannot infinite gain balance finite loss ? 
Thus reasoned Alvarez, priest of the cross. 

But a loftier form stepped slowly in. 
Dark was his visage and lined with sin ; 
Stern of brow, and a changeless eye 
That told of eternal constancy ; 
A man created for good or ill, 
But — well or evil — for ruling still ; 
Caring for nought save his single aim, 
Aiming at nothing save power and fame, — 
Hernando Cortez — immortal name ! 

Of old the Prince of the Powers of the Storm 

Took the grovelling serpent's form, — 

Habitation strange and mean ! — 

And since then on many a scene, 

Unrecognized by mortal sight, 

Has fallen his glance's deadly blight. 

But never in so dread a guise 

Does he meet the seraph's eyes 

As when a mighty monarch mind, 

Fit to regulate its kind, 

Feels the fiery hell-born sway 

Mould it like the plastic clay, 

And the temple of a god 

Is a mocking fiend's abode. 

The harsh voice broke, stern, cold, and clear ; 

Like file on iron it shocked the ear ; 

And steady, contemplated, slow 

Came the terse rhetoric's ready flow. 

And from his words and from his air, 

And the fixed eyeballs' changeless stare, 



THE AZTEC EMPEROR. 

You had judged an injured man was he, 
Taxing false friend with treachery, 
But firm in his authority. 

" Gautimozin, I have tried 

To wean thee from thy hellish creed, 
To teach thee of the One that died, 

His mother and our God ; the meed 

"They win who serve our holy sire, 
Who reigns in lands beyond the seas ; 

The endless doom of pain and fire 

For those who turn from things like these 

"To worship idols. I have spared 
Thy life when in my power it lay. 

The steel was whet, thy bosom bared ; 
I turned the deadly point away. 

" (Though a fit recompense thy death 
For all thy heinous crimes had been. 

For scoffing Him who gave thee breath, 
And long rebellion's blackening sin.) 

"Since then each passing day, each hour 
Has been a day, an hour, of grace. 

Thine have been luxury and power, — 

Witness the guards thy steps that grace, — 

"Thy own old faithful ones, who serve 
Thee now, as when upon the throne. 

A worthier master they deserve ; 
A worthier master they shall own. 



107 



io 8 THE AZTEC EMPEROR. 

" All, all from me and from my friends ! 

And what returnest thou for this? 
Foul treachery is thy amends; 

Thy best reward the Judas kiss. 

" For this thy guidance led astray 

Our footsteps in the pathless wood, 
Where, thy false mandates to obey, 

Thy warriors wait to shed our blood. 
And therefore, Guatimozin, I 
Pronounce thy doom — thou must die." 

At the word a low murmur was heard all around ; 
'Twas grief, not approval, that freighted that sound. 
The chief with a frown gave a fierce look askance, 
And the heart of the boldest was awed by that glance. 
Then a gesture and word of command. — In a breath 
They had seized Guatimozin, to lead to his death. 

Oft in the time of the summer heat, 

When the dust lies thick in the sunny street, 

Where gusts from opposing quarters meet, 

A shadowy form springs up between, 

Cloudlike, ghostlike, dimly seen, 

Writhing in their fierce embrace, 

Wildly driven from place to place, 

Now for a moment left at rest, 

Then furiously backward pressed, 

Then forward whirling, then to and fro 

As the windy furies grow, 

Till you scarce can doubt that life 

In that swaying form is rife, 

And it struggles to complain 

Of its terror and its pain, 



THE AZTEC EMPEROR. 



109 



Reaching out its airy arms 
Tremulous with mute alarms. 

Such was Guatimozin's soul 

As it broke from his noble will's control 

At the words of Cortez. Nor even pride 

Could hold its own with that stormy tide. 

And now he wondered if all that seemed 

Were some wild fantasy midnight-dreamed : 

Now tingled in every vein to be free, 

To strike one blow for liberty 

And his wrongs and the wrongs of Mexico 

That should lay the tyrant forever low. 

His hands were clenched, and his lips were white, 

But he would not rail where he could not smite. 

And that eye so steady, that voice so cold, 

That brow so unabashed and bold, — 

Could there lurk a serpent lie 

Underneath that brow and eye, 

Writhing, twining, there in joy? 

And that charge so boldly given 

In the face of earth and heaven, — 

Could there be upon the earth 

Man of merely mortal birth, 

Who could make it with such an air 

Of truth, if aught save truth were there ? 

Half doubting thus his own innocence, 
In very wonder his frown relents, 
And mystery takes the place of ire, 
As the vague storm quenches the blazing fire. 
But the storm will oft for a moment pause 
10* 



no THE AZTEC EMPEROR. 

To gather its force for a mightier crash. 
And in the torrent's brief calm the cause 

We find of a fury more wild and rash. 

The flame declines ere a loftier flash; 
Storm, fire, and soul have the self-same laws. 

And so as the jarring voice grew still 

There shot through his being a wilder thrill, 

As lightning shoots through the heaven's expanse. 

And he woke like a dreamer from his trance. 

And all his wrongs swept over his soul 

In billows of fire beyond control, 

Till the blood seemed whirling in every vein ; 

The nerves, burned, tingling ; the dizzy brain 

Swam in an ecstasy of pain, — 

Of pain most subtle and refined, — 

And the mighty wrath that filled his mind 

Swelled up the tortured soul within, 

Till the barrier grew more slight and thin 

That hides from the prisoned spirit's eye 

The secrets of futurity ; 

And slighter, thinner, fainter grew, 

Till his gaze could pierce it through. 

And from his spirit's airy height 

The mysteries of wrong and right, 

Of retribution and of crime, — 

God's laws and balances sublime, — 

Lay stretched beneath his sweeping gaze, 

As checkered fields and woodland maze 

Below yon eagle's distant eye 

That circles in the upper sky. 

Yet, from his former self estranged, 

Changed was his mien, his voice was changed ; 



THE AZTEC EMPEROR. m 

For in that fearful inward storm 

His soul had so filled all his form 

You seemed but in his beaming face 

An angel's lineaments to trace. 

And his voice rang out like the liquid swell 

That heaves from the soul of the dying bell, 

Though his words were distinct as the steady stroke 

Of the death-watch in the mouldering oak. 

" Hearken, Malinche, hearken ! and know 
That the words thou hast uttered shall work to thy woe. 
The deeds thou hast done in the pride of thy power — 
The smouldering ruins of palace and bower ; 
A prosperous people laid low in the dust ; 
The sacking of cities ; the breaking of trust — 
Shall find their requital, curse answering crime. 
The one has been monstrous : the other, sublime 
In relentless fulfilment, shall reach through all time 
Till the wrongs thou hast wrought have been fully 

repaid. 
Then, and then only, the curse shall be stayed. 

" The land thou hast deluged with blood and with tears 
Shall yield nothing better in all coming years. 
The discord you sow here your children shall reap ; 
In fear shall they labor, distrustfully sleep, 
Until, like our own, shall thy dominant race 
To a lustier foreign invader give place. 

" For thee who so seekest for measureless power, 
Thy will thou shalt have for a glittering hour; 
Then, stripped of thy honors and wealth, thou shalt die, 
With a weight of despair pressing black on thy eye, 



I I2 THE AZTEC EMPEROR. 

In pain and in poverty, slighted and scorned 
By the nation whose glory thy conquest adorned, 
And e'en by that monarch who bade thee go forth, 
And whose sway thou hast spread o'er the whole West- 
ern earth. 

"Thy fame shall endure. Yes, if Lucifer's fame, 

Coupled with all the unspeakable shame 

Of powers, created as blessings to man, 

Degraded to serve in a murderous plan ; 

A brightness angelic all blackened by sin ; 

A voice formed for praise making hideous din ; 

The foe of thy Maker, the foe of thy kind ! — 

If such fame can please thee, such fame thou shalt find. 

" The realm that has sent thee shall sink to decay ; 
Dim shall her glory grow, powerless her sway ; 
From the night that is coming shall brighten no day. 

" One judgment more to thy gaze I unfold : 

Thrice o'er our heads have the centuries rolled. 

Again is a monarch led forth to his death, 

While nations stand watching, and hushed is their 

breath. 
Little by little his empire has passed, 
Till the rush of his foemen grew swift as a blast, 
Till his stronghold lies buried in ruin and gore, 
And Mexico's monarch is monarch no more." 

At the first word they had loosed their hold. 
Silent and staring, the rude and bold 
Stood, filled with wonder and with awe 
By what they heard and what they saw. 



MIDNIGHT. 1 1 3 

A breath, half-gasping, Cortez drew, — 
For the voice of truth he felt and knew, — 
A shivering, horror-freighted breath, 
Then waved them on to the place of death. 

Many a year has passed since then, 
Fateful to nations and to men ; 
Many a year of dark and light, 
Many a year of wrong and right; 
Of mirrored wonders strangely veiled ; 
Of mirrored glories strangely paled ; 
Of priceless guerdons, as ills bewailed ; 
Till the nations hushed their breath 
At the news of Maximilian's death, 
Nor knew that death had been foretold 
In the days of old. 

867-1868. 



MIDNIGHT. 



All, all around was desolate and bare. 

The fields were tenantless. The woods lay black. 
A formless something seemed to fill the air 

With spirit-presence. In the cloudy rack 
Strange shapes appeared ; majestical and wan 

Were some, and some were hideous as Hell. 
The buried brook with frightened murmur ran, 

Like damned ones muttering what they dare not tell. 
The wind came o'er the hill with sullen power, 

Hissing through sifted snow and grasses sere. 
The spirit of darkness ruled the midnight hour, 

The ghastly earth and heavens all sinister. 



H4 



THE MYSTIC MESSAGE. 



But in that waste I found one little spot 

Where gloom to brightness yielded, and was not. 

On swaying branches hung a thousand gems, 

Such gems as ne'er to mortal hand were given, 
And every snow-wreath gleamed with diadems, 

Like Purity encrowned by smiling Heaven. 
1868. 



THE MYSTIC MESSAGE. 

It is not the streamlet's murmur, 
Nor the la.y of woodland bird, 

But a sweeter, subtler music 
Than ear has ever heard ; 

Like the sound of distant singing 
On the dreamy waters lone, 

When the queenly moon in heaven 
Is silently sailing on. 

'Tis Nature's mystic message, 
Which prophet, bard, and sage 

Have fixed in broken snatches 
On the bright immortal page. 

Only in broken snatches, 

And yet that song sublime 
Has rhymed with the birth of planets 

And rolled with the rhythm of time, 

Forever and ever sounding, 

In a grand supernal flow, 
With a voice of majestic sweetness 

And a faint, faint chord of woe. 



A POETS BURIAL. 

Ah, Nature, mother Nature, 
Would it were mine to tell 

The charm of thy wondrous secret 
In the words of thy oracle ; 

That dimly, even though dimly, 
Thy glory might shine through me, 

As the sun through purpling cloudlets 
Streams over the happy sea. 

Till all my soul should kindle 
And glow with thy sacred fire, 

And races and ages should gather 
To gaze on the splendid pyre ! 



ii5 



:868. 



A POET'S BURIAL. 

Press down the fresh and fragrant sod ; 
Press gently, for there lies beneath 
A heart as fresh and blithe, and Death 

Bears Nature's son to Nature's God. 

His was a genuine human heart, 
Not wholly void of blot and blur ; 
A hand aye free to minister 

And prompt to take the wronged one's part ; 

A voice uplifted for the right 

As God had given the right to see ; 
A love that clung to liberty 

Through gloom and glare of dubious fight. 



ll6 A POETS BURIAL. 

He was a part of Nature's self, 

As are the waves and singing-birds, 
The full-voiced pines, the quiet herds, 

Or fabled faun or woodland elf. 

O mirror of the sun and shower 

And rivulet and waterfall, 

And that deep thrill that runs through all 
Of mingled merriment and power ! 

And marked you not when, sadly slow, 
They laid his body in the earth, — 
How dead to pain, how deaf to mirth ! — 

Creation's sympathetic woe. 

Great tear-drops rained from out the skies ; 

In deathly shade the landscape lay ; 

And all the concave dull and gray 
Was resonant with muffled cries, 

Like a strong heart's unuttered moan, 
That struggles in the heaving breast 
Through the long night that brings no rest 

And winds went by with dismal moan. 

And then the thunder requiem pealed . 

Like an archangel's voice on high ; 

Yet seemed its awful monody 
To hint some glory unrevealed. 

Well, he is gone, and we have lost 
One more of God's best gifts to man, 
A strong, true soul, whose arch could span 

The gulf, by others all uncrossed, 



A WATCHWORD FOR CUBA. 

Which severs beauty's world, that rolls 
In waves of light on every hand, 
From the dull earth whereon we stand, 

The voiceless sphere of vulgar souls. 

He soothed not with subservient lyre 
The lettered leisure of the wise, 
Afar from common ears and eyes, 

But raised from lower thoughts to higher 

The mighty monarch mass of men, — 
His instrument the human heart. 
Its every chord beneath his art 

Thrilled to the full and thrilled again. 

Press down the fresh and fragrant sod ; 
Press gently, for there lies beneath 
A heart as fresh and blithe. In death 

Lo ! Nature's son joins Nature's God. 



117 



1868. 



A WATCHWORD FOR CUBA. 

The waves were gleaming : the sunlight shone 

On the Queen of the Antilles, — 
On peopled city, savanna lone, 
On olden castle with moss o'ergrown, 
On palms, whose frondage was idly blown 
By the slumb'rous tropic breeze. 



Il8 A WATCHWORD FOR CUBA, 

O life was lovely and earth was fair 

In the blaze of that golden day ! 
But there breathed a dirge in the sunny air, 
A plaintive wailing of woe was there, 
Which even the waters seemed to share, 

As they sobbed in their heaving play. 

To the right old Moro looked grimly down. 

The harbor stretched before. 
Far to the left lay the clustered town, 
Mottled with yellow and blue and brown. 
Between, the troops of the Spanish crown 

With their captives, lined the shore. 

With a firm, proud tread and a fearless eye 

The martyrs take their stand. 
Though the distant dear ones may claim a sigh, 
No plea is uttered, no craven cry ; 
They feel it is glorious so to die, 

To die for a fettered land ! 

Behind them is drawn the serried line 

Of the stern, relentless foe. 
Like diamond-sparkles the bayonets shine, 
And the banner glows like a thing divine ; 
Five times that flag they have laid supine 

In disastrous overthrow. 

" Down on your knees !" cried the Spanish chief. 

" Kneel down to receive the fire !" 
There was silence ; none stirred ; in that stillness brief 
The rustling smite of the plantain leaf 
You well might hear, and the zephyr's grief 

And the ripples' gentle choir. 



THE BUTTERFLY'S MISTAKE. 

A man stepped forth from the fated crowd. 

No tremor was in his tone. 
Clear were his accents and full, not loud, 
Noble his bearing, his form unbowed ; 
His answer, reverent, grand, and proud, — 

"I kneel to my God alone." 

The words thrilled forth on the sunny air. 

Then the fatal order came. 
Along the line broke the lurid glare ; 
The smoke rolled outward in wreaths ; and there 
Lay Crittenden on the sea-shore bare, 

Sacred to deathless fame. 

The words sped, thrilling, — a nation's dower ; 

There was magic in the tone. 
They swelled and deepened from hour to hour, 
Till the fruit had grown from the perfect flower, 
And Cuba shouted with voice of power, 
" I kneel to my God alone !" 
[869. 



119 



THE BUTTERFLY'S MISTAKE. 

Along a grassy bank a peacock strode ; 

Below him lay a soft and sunny meadow ; 
Above him shook the leaflets of the wood ; 

And all around was draped in cooling shadow. 

Gay plumage decked his smooth and shapely sides ; 

His crest with all a rainbow's wealth was glowing 
And as he moved along with stately strides, 

His train with blue-gold orbs seemed overflowing. 



120 THE BUTTERFLY'S MISTAKE. 

Far over brightening hill and shady dale 
An idle butterfly his way was winging, 

Now loitering by the lilies of the vale, 

Now in the fields 'mid drowsy locust-singing. 

Each ruddier blossom caught his wandering eye ; 

Each sweeter flower-cup lured his wings astraying; 
This way and that the giddy pinions ply, 

Heedless of all save silly glee and playing. 

At last he viewed the peacock's airy crest 
In zephyrs swaying with a tremulous motion, 

Like thistle-down that shades the sparrow's nest, 
Or light mist rising from a troubled ocean. 

" Aha !" thought he, " at last I've found a prize, 
A rare rich prize, a wealth of honeyed treasure ; 

Such flower as this has never met my eyes." 
And down he wavered, all aglow with pleasure. 

The peacock glancing, thoughtless, overhead, 
Beheld the flake of downward fluttering glory 

With splendid wings of gold and blue outspread, 
Wondered and pecked — and ended thus my story. 

Reader, beware, lest in the vain pursuit 
Of every fleeting aim and fickle fancy 

The little-pondered act bear bitter fruit 

Of danger, hid by heaven's high necromancy. 

Beware, there's death within the blossom gay; 

Beware, your touch may cause another's sorrow; 
And he who has the peacock's part to-day 

May have the butterfly's before to-morrow. 

1869. 



THE MURDERER'S REPLY. 12 \ 



THE MURDERER'S REPLY. 

Within an English court a prisoner stood, 

Pale but regardless of the gazing crowd. 

His brow was high, his temples sunk and veined ; 

His countenance wearied, as with mental toils 

And long-borne burdens — more than man should bear. 

Thus to his judge with listless mien he spoke : 

" My lord, you ask me what I have to say. 
Why this : The laws of God and man alike 
Read ' blood for blood' ; and I have taken life: 
And therefore in all justice I should die. 

"Yes, 'blood for blood,' — three twelvemonths back 

or so 
Our king — God bless him and forgive his faults — 
Was very angry, for the King of France 
Had cut some trunks of logwood in Balize. 

" He must have been quite angry, for it took 
For every tree a bleeding human heart, 
A priceless soul sent to its last account, 
To pacify his spirit, — yet he reigns. 

" But let that pass. The murdered man and I 
Were schoolfellows together; conned one book, 
Slept in one bed, and joined in boyish games. 
Was it a wonder that we loved one maid ? 

"Then, as we older grew, our paths diverged, 
But not our love for her. He had become 
A prosperous merchant, of whom all the town 
Prophesied well ; and /, a pedagogue. 
.11* 



I2 2 THE MURDERER'S REPLY. 

" My talent — for I had it — was outstripped 
In all things by his tact, — in all save one : 
For Mary's love was mine, and we were wed : 
And from that hour he was my bitter foe. 

" He grew to be the county's wealthiest man. 
And wealth is power you know. And power may be 
Employed to aid or crush. Well, his was used, 
Used without stint, to crush and ruin me. 

" So bad grew steadily worse. My livelihood 
Went first, and then my good name followed it. 
I could not find employment. It was cold, 
Bitterly cold, and yet we had no fire. 

" No fire nor food ! One evening as I looked 
Upon my shivering, starving wife and child, 
I thought : God gave this fruitful earth to man 
That all might live ; but he has robbed my share. 
Can it be sin to take what is my own ? 

" So thinking, forth upon the road I walked. 

He, too, was there ; his fate had brought him there. 

Now, as I stand before my God, I meant 

Only to take from his full purse the gold 

His arts had robbed me of. 

"But God or fate 
Would not permit it. At my harsh demand 
He drew a pistol, warning me. I closed 
And wrenched it from him. Then I shot him dead. 
'Twas done in frenzy; but 'twas done forever. 

" And that, my lord, is all I have to say, 
For I am tired of life and long to die." 
1869. 



THE FIRE- FLY. 123 



THE FIRE-FLY. 



'Twas nothing but a light within a hand; 

A prisoned light that gleamed beyond its prison. 

Once it was free, and in the cool night air 
Disported like a fairy lamp, upborne 
By unseen hands and rivalling the stars, 
That gazed in paler lustre from on high. 

And even now the horny hand grew bright 
And almost beautiful beneath its glow, 
That shone through clutching fingers, like the face 
Of some good angel, for a while condemned 
To dwell within a dungeon. 

Then I thought 
'Twas not the only light that I had seen, 
Which should have had the free air's boundless scope. 
Pent up within a hand's-breadth. One I knew 
(Ay more than one) whose soul was quick with fire, 
Eternal, inextinguishable, divine, 
Which would have filled the wide earth with its rays 
Had it found freedom. Ignorance barred it in, 
And strong-armed Circumstance, and the shrinking 

shame 
Of self-distrust, that preys on noble minds 
Rather than on the vulgar. 

Every soul 
Is as that fire-fly, bright but cabined in. 
Some gleam beyond their barriers, and some 
Merge with the dull clod that walls them round, 



124 THE CHIEFTAIN OF CA MAGUEY. 

Stifled and crushed, or glimmer on unseen, 
Making an inward rapture. 

Could the full rays stream out in perfect glare 
Then man were the similitude of God ; 
The Adam ere he fell ; Deity himself 
In miniature reflected. 

Nazareth saw 
That sight, and Bethlehem, and Bethany, 
And Olivet, and old Jerusalem, 
And the sad garden of Gethsemane, 
And Calvary's sacred mount : for perfect man 
Was there in all his glory. Perfect God 
Was also there, for God and man were one, — 
The mystery of the ages. 
1869. 



THE CHIEFTAIN OF CAMAGUEY. 

O there's many a vista grand and bright 

By mountain and plain and sea, 
But the loveliest spot that the wide earth owns 

Is the valley of Yomoree. 

The hills sweep round like a mighty bowl, 

And the vale it lies below, 
Where the river winds in a silver band 

And tufted palm-trees grow. 

A thousand feet from the sheer, sheer verge ! 

A thousand feet of air ! 
A grisly brink, and a ghastly fall 

From the cliff to the valley fair ! 



THE CHIEFTAIN OF CA MAGUEY. 

In fiery Alvarado's time, 

When the Spaniard swept the land. 
'Twas here by the brink of the lofty steep 

A chieftain took his stand. 

His brow was dusk, but his mien was high. 

He could not be a slave, 
To toil in the mines of the pitiless foe 

And fill a brutish grave. 

With horse and hound come the hireling troop, 

With devilish yell and sneer. 
"And prithee, friend," quoth a jibing voice, 

"What doeth your lordship here? 

"The mountain air is fresh and cool, 
But the mines they are dark and damp. 

The sunshine is gay, but a dismal thing 
Is the dim and flaring lamp." 

Then another spoke in a sterner tone : 

" Ho, chieftain of Camaguey ! 
Death or life — be the choice your own. 

Our errand is no child's play." 

The Spanish speech to the chieftain's ear 

Was little but senseless sound ; 
But "death or life," he caught the words, 

And his heart gave a joyous bound. 

For the life that had once so blithesome been 

Was a weary weight to bear, 
And the sombre shade of his people's doom 

Dimmed all the sunny glare. 



125 



I 2 6 THE CHIEFTAIN OF CA MAGUEY. 

His power was crushed and his hope was gone ; 

Kindred nor land had he. 
What wonder he looked on the doom of death 

As the guerdon of liberty? 

What thoughts of fire through his spirit whirled 

No mortal man may know. 
This answer he made in his native tongue, 

Syllabled sternly slow : 

" Death or life — would ye grant the choice? 

It never was yours to give. 
Lo, death lies here at my very feet, 

And ye cannot bid me live. 

" My choice is taken : 'tis death, not life ; 

Yet my death, like my life, shall be free. 
No hireling hand shall speed my soul. 

I have answered, — Yomoree."* 

He turned and leaped in the awful void. 

Aghast they looked below, 
A whirling form and a headlong rush — 

And death had claimed their foe. 

A dizzy crowd on the beetling cliff; 

And down in the valley fair 
A shapeless mass 'mid the tangled herbs. 

A thousand feet of air ! 

The cliff still bares its rugged front 

To the tropic sun and storm. 
But a name that shall last till the ages end 

Was left by that mangled form. 



* The attempt of the Indian chief to say " I die" in Spanish. 



THE LAND OF SPIRITS. 

O there's many a sepulchre grand and proud 

By mountain and plain and sea, 
But never man had a nobler tomb 

Than the valley of Yomoree. 
869. 

THE LAND OF SPIRITS. 

Where is the land of spirits 

Whither the loved and blest, 
Whither the scorned and hated, 

Flee for a time of rest ; 
There through a thousand ages 

Waiting the Judgment-day, 
When the wheat shall be surely winnowed 

And the chaff shall be blown away ? 

Oft when the noontide shimmer 

Mellowed on hill and glade, 
Down in the fragrant meadow 

Under the orchard shade, 
Upward dreamily gazing 

Into the cloudless blue, 
I have fancied a gleam supernal 

Brightened that perfect hue. 

Oft when the sun was setting 

Deep in the western sky 
Visions of golden beauty 

Greeted my musing eye, 
Visions of regal purple, 

Visions supremely fair, 
Till it seemed that the happy spirits 

Might well have abided there. 



127 



I2 8 HASSAN'S VISION. 

Who has not seen the visage, 

Furrowed by care and years, 
Shadowed by life-long troubles, 

Dimmed by a lifetime's tears, 
Flash into sudden beauty, 

Warm with a heavenly glow? 
What if the lost one's fingers 

Were smoothing that aged brow ? 

What if the land of spirits 

Be the land we daily tread, 
The land of the toiling living 

As well as the silent dead ? 
No, not the dead but the vanished, 

Not gone to another sphere, 
But watching with ceaseless vigil 

Our troubles and triumphs here? 
1869. 



HASSAN'S VISION. 

Hassan ben Hadad the wise and grand 

Was heir of a royal line. 
For him bloomed the beauties of all the land, 

For him did her rubies shine. 
Yet was he sick of a mystic ill 
That baffled human lore and skill. 

One morn there met at his palace-gate 

An eager, wondering crowd. 
As forth he stepped with a mien sedate, 

Yet humbled, the people bowed. 



HASSAN'S VISION. j 2 g 

" Not so, my worthy friends," said he ; 
" Never more shall you kneel to me. 

" You note the change in my face and tone 

And marvel to see me so. 
Draw near that I may not feel alone, 

And hear what has brought me low. 
Yet a weight is taken from off my breast, 
And life henceforward is blithe and blest. 

"Last night, when I laid me down to sleep, 

A trouble was in my heart — 
A deep, dull pain — and I longed to weep, 

But the tears refused to start. 
And I felt that none in the world could be 
So wretched as I in my luxury. 

"Then my thoughts flowed on in a turbid stream 

(For never a one was gay), 
Until at last in a vision or dream 

It ended. Beneath me lay 
The earth, fast fading, a tiny ball. 
And space was round me, — and that was all : 

" Stars and space and a viewless power 

That bore me through the air ! 
At once, as opens a tropic flower, 

A glory beyond compare 
Beamed dazzlingly on my startled eyes, 
And I knew I was Hearing Paradise. 

"There were gates of jasper and streets of gold 

And faces I could not see 
For their wondrous splendor, — a thousand-fold 

Brighter than suns could be. 



13° 



HASSAN'S VISION. 

And all the air with music rang 

As countless thundering voices sang. 

" Then I heard a voice : and it spake to me 

From a white and awful throne. 
The broad-flung roar of an angry sea, 

Or the mountain thunder's tone, 
Were faint compared to those words of doom. 
Yet a lofty grief touched them all with gloom. 

" ' Alone hast thou been in heart and hope, 

Alone shalt thou henceforth be 
In body, with space for thy boundless scope 

Through a blank eternity. 
Earth, and heaven shall pass away ; 
But alone shalt thou wander forever and aye.' 

" Then forth again I was surely driven 

Past the ranks of cherubim, 
Past the shining portals of happy heaven, 

And out in the shadows dim. 
Out in the shadowy land of mist, 
Borne by a force I could not resist ! 

" World after world as I passed along 

Receded from my view. 
From some came the chorus of joyous song, 

And wails from some, — and I knew, 
For the only time in a splendid life, 
How to feel for another's bliss or strife. 

" Past happy homes where the loved ones met, 

But without the power to stay ! 
My brow was damp with a horrid sweat, 

And I strove in vain to pray 



HASSAN'S VISION. 

But for a place with my kind once more, 
However lowly, however poor ! 

" Ah, God ! how lovely it seemed to me, 

This life of my fellow-men ! 
How boundless the depths of my misery ! 

How I longed to hear again 
The kindly tones of a human voice ! 
Ah, how it makes my heart rejoice ! 

" World after world I passed them all 

With a burning, mad desire, 
And my soul went forth in a dismal call ; 

But a laugh responded. Fire 
Was close beside me, and hellish glare 
And writhing figures, — the damned were there. 

"And one I saw, in his speechless pain, 

Turn with pitying eye 
To another who strove, but strove in vain, 

From a lot more dread to fly. 
But I knew no being would weep for me, 
And hell seemed heaven to my misery. 

"The very damned were not alone, 

But soon they were far behind ; 
And forth I swept in the great unknown, 

The chaos vast and blind. 
One by one sickened the stars and died, 
And darkness was round me on every side. 

On, on, and on in the formless blank, 

The palpable, nameless vast, 
Where never a sound arose and sank, — 

No, not the archangel's blast ! 



!3i 



132 



THE MINER'S FATE. 



Where thought ne'er travelled nor seraph trod- 
Beyond all save the mind of God ! 

" Still, on and on, and a maddened cry 

Surged up from my bursting heart. 
Well might its awful agony 

Have made the seraphs start. 
A cry too hopeless to be a prayer ! 
But the boundless mercy of God was there." 
[869. 



THE MIN ER'S FATE. 

He was a miner, rough and swart of face, 
Yet not unseemly featured, frank and brave. 

She seemed the flower, that, full of gentle grace, 
Sways with each zephyr rippling o'er the wave. 

Lovely but wayward ! — and a sense of wrong 
Had filled with bitterness her girlish heart. 

Rash words sprang to her lips, — " Who cares how long 
Before we meet again? — 'tis well we part." 

He turned, yet more in sorrow than in pride; 

Such words from her could only give him, pain. 
His noble nature could not stoop to chide. 

He answered, "Ellen, we shall meet again." 

It might be something in his tone or air 

Which filled her soul with vague and dismal dread. 

She could not tell, but waited — till a glare 

Broke forth at noon, and filled the mine with dead, 



THE DEVIL'S HOLE. I33 

For weeks they sought his body. All but him 
Were, one by one, drawn forth into the day. 

But somewhere in the shadows vague and dim, 
Unseen by mortal eye, her Alfred lay. 

Full threescore years departed. In the mine 
Another shaft was opened. Awestruck there 

Stood the rough workmen/ Down the steep incline 
They viewed a face of manly beauty rare. 

Some subtle chemistry of earth had kept 
His form unaltered and his face unmarred. 

He lay supine, with matted hair that swept 
His brow, and hand uplifted for a guard. 

But no one knew him of the crowds that came 

To gaze upon his features; till at last 
Approached a tottering, silver-headed dame, 

Whose soul seemed wrapped in memories of the past. 

Who, looking on him with a joyful cry, — 
A cry that told of bitter years of pain, — 

Sank down beside him. Lo ! the prophecy 
Had come to pass, and they had met again. 



THE DEVIL'S HOLE. 

The stream meanders many a mile 
By velvet meadow and rustic stile ; 
Past cottage gable and village spire 
And maids in holiday attire ; 
O'er shallow reaches of shining sand, 
Where patient cattle lingering stand ; 
12* 



134 



THE DEVIL'S HOLE. 

Pallidly gleaming beneath the moon ; 
Glowing like gold in the setting sun. 

But under the shade of a shaggy bank 
Lieth a hollow dark and dank. 
Alders, fringing the other side, 
See themselves in the sluggish tide. 
Above arises the wooded hill, 
Haunt of the owl and whippoorwill. 
No eye has pierced to the depths below, 
Where stealthy currents come and go ; 
But the pool has many a secret dread, 
Many a tale of the early dead, 
Who, plunging down in its shadows gray, 
Returned no more to the light of day ; 
Many a shriek and gurgling moan ; 
Many a bleached and crumbling bone. 

What mysteries more its shadows hold 
Never to mortal man were told. 
But the stoutest diver shuns the leap, 
And the swimmer turns with a wary sweep. 
In the glare of noon and the morning gray, 
And the mellow flush of the dying day, 
It lieth there like a guilty soul, 
And rustics call it the "Devil's Hole." 

Our life flows gayly and gladly on, 

In the summer breeze and the summer sun, 

But somewhere under a shaggy bank 

Lieth a hollow deep and dank, 

Where the eddies wheel in a serpent coil 

And the turbid waters ceaseless toil, 



THE MAID OF GALILEE. 135 

Striving to drag their helpless prey 
Forever down from the light of day. 
Sin and Sorrow and Shame are there, 
With baleful visage and demon glare. 
Strive, swimmer, strive for thy perilled soul ! 
None cometh out from the Devil's Hole. 
1869. 



THE MAID OF GALILEE. 

Fair was the night, — for the sun had set, — 

And the hills of Palestine 
Stood boldly forth from the western sky, 

And the stars had a wondrous sheen. 

But something seemed in the fragrant air 

Like incense gladly given, 
And the holy silence that brooded round 

Was the very hush of heaven. 

In a cottage home of Nazareth 

Stood a maiden young and fair. 
White as the foam was her spotless brow, 

Ebon her flowing hair. 

And God had seen what the eye of man 

Might never have power to see, 
That in all the earth there was none so pure 

As Mary of Galilee. 

A sudden tremor filled the air ; 

A white and dazzling face 
Beamed on her sight ; and the maiden bowed 

With an awed and lowly grace. 



136 THE MAID OF GALILEE. 

For she knew that Jehovah's messenger 

Had entered her lowly room, 
And deep in her soul a rising prayer 

Was opening into bloom. 

Then the angel spoke, — and his every tone 

Was musical as the sea's, — 
"Hail, Mary, blessed art thou," he said, 

" Blessed with endless peace ; 

" For a glory to thee has been vouchsafed 

That never was given before. 
Lo ! thou shall bear the Holy One 

Foretold in days of yore ; 

"And he shall be called the Son of God; 

And Jesus his name shall be ; 
And the throne of David shall be his throne 

To all eternity." 

"Behold the handmaid of the Lord. 

His holy will be done," 
Said Mary, and over her face there broke 

A glow like the setting sun. 

For her soul was full of a holy light, 
And she knew that to her was given 

A crown eternal, surpassing all 
The glories of earth and heaven. 

Yea, the seraphs that sing by the spotless throne 

Such glory might never see 
As God had granted the lowly maid, 
Sweet Mary of Galilee. 
1869. 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. 1 ^ 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. 

Not in the Orient lies it, 
Where the destroying sirocco 
Scourges the Libyan desert, 
Wafting the furnace-hot sand-drifts 
Down to the populous rivers, 
Whelming them little by little. 

Not in the mountains lies it, 
The bleak Uralian Mountains, 
Always draped in their snow-veils 
And half the year frozen all sombre, 
Where jagged larches and spruces 
Half shade, overhanging, the cavernous 
Glens, that re-echo the wolf's howl, 
Long-drawn note of lamentation. 

No, it lies far away in the grass-sea, 
The rolling prairie sparse timbered, 
The wonderful land, never wholly 
Reclaimed from Nature's dominion, 
And plunged, while yet in the shaping 
Of Husbandry's magical fingers, 
Into the caldron of Moloch, 
The fearful war of the border. 

See, my friend, it is sunset, 
Aye and after, for yonder 
Far adown in the west there, 
Behind the waves of the prairie, 



138 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. 

Rises a cone of brightness, 

Or rather, a semicircle. 

A while ago it was glorious, 

Rich with imperial beauty ; 

And even now it tinges, 

With faint hues and ever changing, 

The straggling edges of cloudland 

That dip in its dimming radiance, — 

A radiance that would be lurid, 

But it has grown too feeble, 

And seems like a prophet fast dying, 

Who, seeing a blood-red future, 

Lacks but the power of translating 

The .evil truth of his vision. 

Overhead rides the sickly 

Moon that lightens Gehenna, 

Flooding the wavering landscape 

With a mist-gleam almost infernal ; 

Such changes it works upon objects, 

Making them larger and vaguer, 

And filling with life and with spirit. 

While a few light handfuls of cloud-fleece 

Float about and before her, 

Veiling her countenance ghastly, 

That peereth forth through the openings, 

Like a fiend through a tattered grave-cloth, 

Playing as children with children, 

In bitter and cruel mockery. 

Behind on the road we have travelled, 
Far, far behind, where a dwelling 
Is, or should be, there is only 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. 

A light newly lighted, that broadens 

And seems to promise a welcome. 

So softly effulgent is it 

One almost might deem the warm-hearted 

Settler's own hospitable spirit 

Beamed out to us over the prairie ; 

Luring us back into safety, 

Back from the terror before us, 

The Valley of the Shadow of Death. 

Far ahead on the horizon 
Glimmer and glower at intervals 
(Glower like a dawn ill-fated) 
The lurid fires of the prairie. 
Some, the more distant, seem only 
Like an unchanging aurora, 
A fallen aurora, resembling 
Its heavenly kin as a demon 
Resembles a glorious angel, 
And bound to the earth for a penance. 
Some, nearer, seem only like hell-fires 
Rising all smoke-stained and ruddy, 
And flaring their insolent menace 
Into the vastness of heaven. 

Nearer yet than the hell-fires, 
Wave after wave, rolling inward, 
Of prairie brown and grass-covered, 
Leads to the last of the hill-sides, 
Sloping steeply toward us. 
Not bare is this nor treeless, 
But never a leaf in the moonlight 
Glistens, for all have been girdled. 



l 39 



140 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. 

There they stand, and among them 

Rots a once tenanted cabin, 

Tenantless now and lifeless. 

The logs of the corn-crib have tumbled, 

The stable is lying all shapeless, 

A mass of straw and of brushwood. 

The door has fallen from its hinges ; 

The mud that plastered the crannies 

Has dropped, leaving windows where windows 

Were never before, and the roofwork 

In places is half battered inward. 

Where, ah ! where are the owners ? 

Who can answer the question ? 

Hark ! from over the hill-side, 
Borne on the rustling night-wind, 
Comes the reply mysterious, 
Curdling the blood and chilling; 
And, keeping time to a requiem, 
Unheard yet felt, all the branches, 
Bare as the arms of a skeleton, 
Upward wave and downward, 
Forward wave with vehemence, 
Ever saying, distinctly 
As aught inanimate can say, 
"Back! back! here Death reigneth. 
Death, the mystical monarch. 
Death, the ruler of shadows. 
Back from the valley of the shadow, 
The Valley of the Shadow of Death !" 

Up from the gulf there riseth, 
Yea, from but just beneath us, 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. 

The fearsome chorus nocturnal. 

The katydid and cicala 

Vie with their shrill-toned voices ; 

The one in the shadowy tree-tops, 

The other among the lush grass-blades, 

Sounds all unearthly at night-time. 

The white owl, too, with his dolorous 

Great tones, breaks forth in a startling 

Wail of discordant horror, 

Striking the sensitive ear-drum 

With a jar that makes one shudder. 

The frogs, too, down by the water 

Join in a varied concert, 

From the deep-mouthed bawl of the blood-noun 

To the slender note of the tree-toad, 

And the thin, fine, tremulous music 

That sounds like the song of an insect, 

Varied but awfully lonesome 

At night-time out on the prairie. 

Over them all sings the whippoorwill, 

Bird of ceaseless complaining, 

Which has but one note, and that only 

A note of lamentation ; 

Stealing forth in the gloaming, 

Close to the ground like a grave-ghost, 

Sighing his woes in the darkness. 

'•Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, whip, whip," — 

A score overslough one another 

In a flood of unnatural music. 

Here on the breezy uplands 
We have but the field-lark's whistle, 
The " Bob White" call of the partridge, 
13 



141 



142 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. 

The cry of rejoicing night-hawks, — 

Pleasant sounds only and cheering. 

We are going out of all blitheness, 

Out of all joyous existence, 

Into the sombre chorus, 

Into the shadowy valley, 

The Valley of the Shadow of Death. 

Down in that gulf chaotic, 
Down in that nightmare mingling, 
What forms unknown to creation, 
What ghastly visions infernal, 
Await our approach, but to vanish 
And come again, and surround us, 
Fleeting, but ever thickening, 
Thickening, growing more hideous, 
Nearing, and nearing, and nearing, 
Until, overwhelmed and abysmed, 
We sink whither man may not follow. 

So the thick coming fancies 
Gather, as we go downward, 
Steadily, steadily downward, 
Downward with pale resolution, 
Into the sombre chorus, 
Into the shadowy valley. 



1870. 



AT REST. 143 



AT REST. 

Steadily, silently sweeping on 

Overhead in the azure sky, 
Massy white in the August sun, 

Freighted full as an argosy, 
Changeless and mystical cloudlets three, 
What are ye bearing away from me? 

Lying here in the prairie grass, 

Kissed by zephyr and spray and stem, 

Light and shadow above me pass ; 

Minutes and hours they pass with them. 

Steadily, silently out to sea 

Ye are bearing my lifetime away from me. 

There was a spirit that loved me well, 
A face of beauty, a form how dear ! 

But slowly passes the golden spell, 
And ever dimmer the charms appear. 

Why, ah ! why, should ye bear to sea 

The love that has brightened all life to me? 

Visions I had in the days gone by 

Brighter than ever on earth were known, 

Aspirations supremely high, 

Hopes, bright budded, that ne'er were blown. 

Mine, I said, shall be wealth and fame, 

Wreath of laurel and heart of flame. 

Mine to strive for the weal of man, 
Mine to labor and live and learn ! 

Ah, 'twas regal that boyish plan ! 
But now I scarcely can even yearn. 



i 4 4 THE MURMUR OF WAR. 

Why should I struggle with destiny? 
Bear ye my visions away from me. 

Slowly but surely the sultry glare 

Drains the life-blood from out the earth. 

I have only a man's poor share ; 

Take the tribute for what 'tis worth. 

Yet fain would I stay ye, for well I see 

Ye are bearing my spirit away from me. 

Ah, 'tis pity to see them go, — 
Life, hope, spirit, and all depart ! 

And half in dreaming I seem to know 
There's something fearful about your art. 

Yet why should I struggle with destiny? 

The best of things is to breathe and be. 
1870. 



THE MURMUR OF WAR. 

Over the land where the roses lie 

Warm in the sunny gush ; 
Over the ocean where wave and sky 

Melt in the morning flush ; 
Over prairie and dale and hill, 

Meadow and mountain-side, 
Cometh a murmur faint and shrill, 
That stirs the blood with a mighty thrill, 

Like the swell of a heaving tide. 

It tells of a throne that is toppling down 
With its weight of evil deeds, 

Of a tyrant struggling to save his crown, 
And a million widows' weeds. 



THE MURMUR OF WAR. 

Of a breath that has filled the peaceful world 

With legions of armed men, 
Of martial music, and flags unfurled, 
And countless cohorts together hurled, 

And many a corpse-lined glen. 

More than this in its mystic tone 

We lack the power to trace, 
But we peer and strain in the shadows lone 

That shroud the future's face. 
And one proclaims, " 'Tis the mighty blast 

Of Armageddon abroad : 
The days draw nigh when creation vast 
Shall melt and vanish, to be recast 

Pure by the hand of God." 

And another cries, "Lo ! the time is near 

When man shall be truly free, 
When rulers shall yield in helpless fear, 

And nations shall cease to be, 
And the mighty human brotherhood 

Shall govern the earth alone." 
We only know that the word holds good 
That growth, once started, is ne'er withstood, 
That the wrong is a temple of gilded wood, 

And the right is a granite throne. 
:87c 



J 45 



I4 6 DAY-DREAMS. 

DAY-DREAMS. 
" Our life is twofold." — Byron. 

Well has said that wondrous prince of folly, 
Soul of midnight stored with lightning gleams, 

Sage despite his fancied melancholy, 

That "our life is twofold," work and dreams. 

Not alone in midnight's weird expansion, 

When the outer senses sink to rest, 
Fancy welcomes to her magic mansion, — 

No, she bids us to be alway blest. 

Hovering o'er us like an angel's pinions, 
Leads she on to realms before unknown, 

Changeful vistas, unexplored dominions, 
Full of beauty brightening every zone. 

how oft when wandering, worn and weary, 
Over prairies stretching without end 

In the glaring sun, or threading dreary 
Woodland solitudes where shadows blend, 

1 have joyed to steal from all around me, 

All the tangible and blank and dull, 
Breaking every sordid chain that bound me, 
Living only in the beautiful ! 

Earth and heaven with wondrous shapes were peopled ; 

Future past and present all were there ; 
Lovely nooks and cities many-steepled, 

Glorious landscapes stretching broad and fair. 



CUBA. 147 

Faces brighter than the earth beholdeth, 
Eyes that vied in lustre with the stars ; 

Ancient heroes that the tomb enfoldeth, 
Scenes of luxury and stirring wars. 

These and many another scene entrancing 
Beamed upon my desert-wearied eyes. 

Ever on and on before me dancing, 
Like a transient gleam from Paradise. 

[870. 



CUBA. 



Up from the south comes a wail of woe, 

Up from the golden strand, 
Up from the isle where the blossoms glow 

Gorgeous as Eden-land. 
Full is the hour of a fervent power, 

Stern grow the spirits gay. 
But there rises a wail, for her sons are dead, 
And the star that soared from the ocean-bed, 
For the fourth time whelmed in a sea blood-red. 

Struggles with feeble ray. 

Proudly the palm-tree of Bolivar 

Sank at the earliest blow ; 
Sped the Black Eagle unchecked and far, 

Till struck by an ambushed foe ; 
And Lopez' fate, like a ship of state, 

Swept to a grander doom. 
Say, men who hold the awful key 
To the weal or woe of her destiny, 
Say, shall Cuba's last struggle be 

Wrapped like the rest in gloom ? 



148 THE BANNERS OF THE ISLE. 

The curse that has laid our land in waste 

Blackens her bosom still. 
The cup Columbia did but taste, 

Cuba has drained of ill. 
We know full well what a very hell 

The Spanish rule must be. 
But lust of gold draws our eyes away ; 
And the tyrant's squadrons may go or stay; 
And Cuba must fight as fight she may, — 

For little indeed care we. 

O for a land that could boast a rule 

Of principle, not of gold ! 
O for the sway of a brainless fool 

Who' could not be bought and sold ! 
O that the truth of our nation's youth 

Might flush in her matron veins ! 
For there was a time when we dared do right 
In the sight of man and in God's own sight, 
And valued our mission, grand and bright, 

More than our paltry gains. 
1870. 



THE BANNERS OF THE ISLE. 

Curse it and crush it and blast it forever ! 

Down with the ensign of tyrannous Spain ! 
Up with the beacon of Freedom's endeavor ! 
Up with the flag of free Cuba again ! 
Banneret starry-gemmed, 
What though thy course be stemmed ? 



THE BANNERS OF THE ISLE. I49 

Ne'er shall the foeman exult in thy fall, 

Driven to mountain rock, 

Rent by the battle shock, 
Yara's bright flag, thou shalt conquer them all. 

Banner all sacred, the hands that unfold thee 

Blazon the emblem of God to the air. 
Forth from the mountains he giveth to hold thee, 
Forth in thy glory defiantly flare. 

Thence in thy wrath to leap 

Down with a whirlwind sweep, 
Down through savanna and desolate vale, 

Down to the city's walls, 

Down to Belshazzar's halls, 
Demons may strive, but the right shall prevail. 

Demons? Ah, yes; lo ! a myriad voices 

Start into being and echo the word. 
Hark, in his work how the hireling rejoices, 
Lust in his heart and disgrace on his sword. 

These are the deeds of Spain : 

Innocent children slain, 
Women borne off with a wail of despair, 

Prisoners vilely torn, 

Blinded, and left forlorn. 
Down with the fiends to the Devil's own lair ! 
1870. 



150 A LEGEND OF ALEXANDRIA. 



A LEGEND OF ALEXANDRIA. 

Nestling by Potomac river, 
Slumb'rous Alexandria sees, 

Where the waters flash and quiver, 
Ruffled by the Southern breeze, 

Vessels sailing on forever, 

Freighted full from golden leas. 

On the hill a spire is keeping 
Watch above the sluggish mart. 

Round about the dead are sleeping 
Till the day when all shall start. 

Past the bitter, bitter weeping ; 
Past the anguish of the heart. 

Every mound some message beareth, 
Chiselled deep in snowy stone, 

Telling how the loved one shareth 
Bliss that never here was known. 

But an ancient tablet weareth 

This: "A Stranger's Grave" alone. 

And beneath, so says tradition, 

Lies a lady nobly bred. 
Lured by love's entrancing vision, 

From her English home she fled. 
Years passed by on wings elysian. 

Here she found her lowly bed. 



A LEGEND OF ALEXANDRIA. I5I 

But the loving sunlight presses 

Warmly on her robe of sod ; 
And the gentle shade caresses 

As the branches sway and nod ; 
And the zephyr softly blesses, 

Like a soul at peace with God. 

There a weary wanderer tarried, 

Journeying to lands afar. 
Sore the weight his bosom carried, 

Mourning many a vanished star ! 
But to yonder grave were married 

Hopes that life could never mar. 

Visions of his early folly 

Trooped across his dreaming brain, — 
Yule-time merriment and holly ; 

Courtly dance and blithesome strain ; 
Love's delight and melancholy, — 

Things he ne'er might know again. 

Then a face serene and saintly, 

Idol of his youthful days, 
Holy white and smiling faintly, 

Dawned upon his inward gaze : 
And the tablet, carven quaintly, 

Vanished in a golden haze. 

Once again his suit he urges ; 

Once again consent she yields. 
Pass they ocean's solemn surges, 

Crowded cities, silent fields. 
Then the wealth of bliss that merges 

Lives and souls like herald shields. 



i 5 2 THE ARCTIC QUEEN. 

Once again he saw her fading, 
Slowly fading, day by day : 

Sorrowful, without upbraiding, 
For the loved one gone astray. 

Angels seemed her footsteps aiding. 
Smiling, thus she passed away. 



With a sigh the spell was broken. 

Forms and voices none were there. 
At his feet the solemn token ; 

All around the sunny glare. 
Yet a name no lip had spoken 

Seemed to linger on the air. 
1870. < 



THE ARCTIC QUEEN. 

Her palace doors are open wide to-night, 

Her palace doors beside the northern pole, 
Where through the centuries, right gayly dight 
With ice-gems glistening in the frosty light, 
She sits and listens to the onward roll. 

The gathering roll of millions on the march, 

The ever-broadening tide of human feet. 
She sees the distant east and west o'erarch, — 
" And soon," she cries, " the shaggy northern larch 
And desert wastes their fearless steps shall greet. 



THE NORTHERN PALACE. 



153 



" Ah, surely I have waited long, dear Lord ; 

And long, too long, these boundless realms of mine 
Have lain all destitute of verdant sward, 
And choral voices through the greenwood poured, 

And the warm shapes of loveliness divine. 

"Through the long night (and night upon my heart 
Hangs heavily, though darkness there is none), 

In the cold, steel-like splendor do I start 

And gasp for joy to see the ships depart 
From the soft regions of the sultry sun. 

" They see the slant rays lie along the sky ; 

They see the flaming billows rise and fall ; 
And some, the daring ones, who press more nigh 
Hear a quick crackling, rising sharp and high, 

And a dull roar like whirlwinds in a hall. 

" O feeble-sighted ones and gross of sense ! 

Can they not see the windows gleaming far? 
Can they not trace the splendor streaming thence 
To where I stand in hateful indolence 

With outstretched hands beneath the polar star?" 

1870. 



THE NORTHERN PALACE. 

The banners, the banners are waving to-night, 

The banners of crimson and gold ! 
That flutter and flame on the marvelling sight, 
With tremulous radiance, roseate bright, 
O'er the mystical palace unrolled. 



154 



PARIS AT BAY. 



Walls, pillars, and arches shine crystalline clear, 

The dome has a marvellous gleam ; 
And, full of the beauty that borders on fear, 
Fantastical figures of fretwork appear, 

Like the forms of an Orient dream. 

With every deep swell of the waters below 

The tessellate flooring upheaves ; 
And the palace waves solemnly stately and slow 
To music celestial, while starlets of snow 

Fall, glancing, from numberless eaves. 

Within is a glory that passes compare, 

A splendor man never may see, 
A lustre supernal and misty and rare, 
A throbbing of incense and luminous air, 

As the breathing of seraphs must be. 

There, wrapped in a dream that the centuries love, 

Trooping slowly and noiselessly by, 
The Queen lies aslumber, while drowsily move 
Soft lights o'er her couch and the arms that above 
In folded luxuriance lie. 
1870. 



PARIS AT BAY. 

What will the beautiful city do, 

Girt with a cordon of steel and fire ? 

Pale is her glory of golden hue, 
Slowly totters its crumbling spire. 



PARIS AT BAY. 155 

Her crowds no longer in gay attire 
The airy goddess of mirth pursue, 

Her altar of love is a funeral pyre — 
What will the beautiful city do ? 



How changed from the days when the monarchs drank 

Deep from the wine of her blood-red cup ! 
She frowned, and the proudest nations shrank ; 

She tore them down, and she lifted up. 

Glad were the vanquished her draught to sup, 
Eagerly joining the revellers' rank ; 

They feared her sword, but they loved her cup — 
How changed from the days when the monarchs drank ! 

Hers were splendor and wealth and power ; 

Hers are anguish and wrath and gloom. 
Lightly she valued the golden hour ; 

Sad and silent she waits her doom. 

A poison lurked in the purple bloom 
That tainted many a fragrant bower ; 

The hand wrote Mene about the room — 
Vanish splendor and wealth and power. 

She stands at bay with her shattered sword ; 

Her eyes are gleaming with sullen glare ; 
Sternly fronting the hostile horde, 

With the valor born of a strong despair — 

A strength all boundless to do and dare 
Rather than yield to a foreign lord. 

No hand shall ever her sceptre share — 
She stands at bay with her shattered sword. 



156 LAS TUNAS. 

Ah, would that it might not be too late 
To cancel the sins of a thousand years, 

And safely sever from iron fate, 

By priceless tribute of blood and tears, 
The future freighted with horrid fears, 

The destiny hovering desolate, 

The flapping fiend that lours and leers — 

Would that it might not be too late ! 
1870. 



LAS TUNAS. 

(SUPPOSED NARRATION OF A CUBAN SOLDIER.) 

Sweet was the scene around us, 
Sweet was the breeze that found us, 
From many a merry revel in blossom-brightened 
dales ; 
At our feet were tropic flowers, 
And around, the rainbow bowers, 
And the thorny-guarded cactus, and the regal purple 
veils. 

Behind, the mountain-passes 

Through huge and wooded masses, 
The grim sierra's bulwarks, left narrow winding way ; 

The sea in distance slumbered 

With verdurous isles unnumbered, 
And many a nook of Eden all bright before us lay. 

The palm-trees bended, crooning ; 
The river glided, swooning, 



LAS TUNAS. 



157 



Exhausted by his journey through the rugged upland 
soils ; 
And there beside his borders, 
Free Cuba's faithful warders, 
We vowed her valleys never should become the Span- 
iard's spoils. 

Above us shone the banner, — 

The dazzling island banner, — 
That bore in sacred beauty the star of Yara yet. 

Three stripes were brightly gleaming, 

For each Department streaming, — 
A trinity of glory that shall never, never set ! 

With eager hand, yet steady, 

Some poised the rifle ready, 
In resolute silence waiting for the deadly signal — 
"Fire!" 

But most were ranged in crescent, 

With the sword, which every peasant 
Bears, like a worthy offspring of the old Castilian sire. 

" Oh, not the hirelings yonder, — 

See how they pause and ponder ! — 
And well they may, degenerate, unworthy sons of Spain ! 

Theirs 'tis not to inherit 

The grand chivalric spirit ; 
But in the faithful island the Cids revive again. 

" ' The ever-faithful island !' 

Yes, faithful from the highland, 
The glorious old sierra, to the ever-flowing sea ; 

Faithful to Freedom's story, 

Faithful to truth and glory, 
Faithful, forever faithful, the ocean gem shall be. 
14* 



158 LAS TUNAS. 

"See, steadily advancing, 
Yon line of bayonets glancing. 
What though they have three thousand and we are only 
two ! 
These swords shall overthrow them. 
Men of Camaguey, show them 
What the freeborn sons of Cuba in her righteous cause 
can do." 

So spake Quesada proudly ; 

And the cheer that followed loudly, 
The mighty storm of vivas bursting from every soul, 

Proved that their hearts were in it ; 

And for one glorious minute 
The whole impassioned army began to surge and roll. 

From skirmishers forward scattering 

Comes a desultory pattering. 
From bush and copse and palm-tree our riflemen reply ; 

And gaudy coats are dropping, 

But the column, never stopping, 
Drives swiftly on toward us, like clouds across the sky. 

A sudden roar outcrashes, 

Three hundred rattling flashes 
Stream swiftly from the covert ; down goes the glit- 
tering steel. 

Wounded and dead and dying 

In struggling heaps are lying. 
How at the sudden havoc the torn battalia reel ! 

Clustering, half in terror 
Seeing their fatal error, 



LAS TUNAS. 



159 



They turn to storm the thicket ; but with a mighty yell, 

As if the fiend had won them, 

Our swordsmen rush upon them 
Like a host of raging demons from the very mouth of 
hell. 

The blows fall fast and faster, 

The bayonet quits its master, 
And quickly surges homeward the sword -blade's des- 
perate thrust. 

Another volley sweeping, 

And, from the covert leaping, 
Marmol and all his rifles dash at the shattered crust. 

Back with a wild outcrying 

The Spanish vanguard's flying, 
Back like Apollyon's cohorts before St. Michael's 
blade ! 

Then what a deafening roar ! 

" Marmol for evermore ! 
Viva, forever viva! Viva the whole brigade !" 

But still their line, deploying, 

Maintains a fire annoying, 
And yonder in the hollow the cannon pound away, 

And shells go screaming o'er us, 

Or, plunging down before us, 
Scatter their deadly fragments in showers of iron spray. 

And many a gallant fellow 
Makes the moist earth his pillow, 



160 LAS TUNAS. 

And many a dismal moaning is heard by copse and 
tree. 
But our line remains unshaken, 
And muskets newly taken 
Answer their former masters with defiance full and 
free. 

And so, with furtive dashes 
And brief occasional clashes, 
Where trivial knots of foemen contend for glade or 
wood, 
The line now forward urging, 
Now slowly backward surging, 
For two good hours we held them at bay beside the 
flood. 

Once more the steel is glancing, 
In columns twain advancing, 
For, taught by rude disaster, they shun the middle 
way. 
They aim to turn the crescent — 
Now, Camagueyan peasant, 
Stand firm for all who love you; strike as the lightnings 
slay ! 

The first sweeps up the river 
With a cry that makes it quiver. 
Three times our fire outcrashes, and thrice their course 
is checked. 
Then charge they, shouting mainly, 
And, struggling fierce but vainly, 
Our left comes reeling backward, in wild disorder 
wrecked. 



LAS TUNAS. 161 

Haste, hasten to the water ! 

Haste to the field of slaughter ! 
Haste, or the left is ruined ; haste, or they gain our rear ! 

Then came the order, ringing, 

And half the centre springing 
Dashed swiftly at the Spaniards with a grand, resistless 
cheer. 

Gods ! how our soldiers fought them ! 
Right well, I deem, they taught them 
Macheta's deadly prowess when swung by desperate 
hands. 
Backward and forward tossing, 
With glistening weapons crossing, 
A motley throng becrimsoned the Verde's shining 
sands. 

Some struggled in the water ; 
Some dyed the grass with slaughter ; 
Some stabbed, some struck, some shouted, or yelled, 
or shrieked, or fired, 
Now for a moment severing, 
Then furiously endeavoring 
To check or crowd the foemen, with a zeal that never 
tired. 

Meanwhile the right was busy 

In a strife that made one dizzy : 
It rested, well protected, on a little steep ravine, 

Where a brook went seaward leaping. 

The volunteers are sweeping 
To turn our flank ; but yonder, Marmol is there between. 

Swiftly his line extending, 

And steadily backward trending, 



1 62 LAS TUNAS. 

At every point he meets them, and everywhere repels. 

A strife like Satan's revels ! 

For fiercer far than devils, 
With centuries of outrage, each Cuban bosom swells. 

But Quesada's face grew pallid, 

Though still he strove and rallied, 
For he dreaded more than ever the issue of the day. 

Reversed was now the crescent, 

The wings were retrogrescent, 
And on his weakened centre pressed Spain's reserved 
array. 

A score of horse came clattering, 

Reeking and foam-bespattering, 
And Cespedes among them, his thoughtful face aglow. 

" Hold them a little longer ! 

Hold them, we'll soon be stronger ! 
Hold them, for Santa Lucia is coming from below !" 

Then what a joyous quiver 

Thrilled from ravine to river ! 
From right and left and centre rose one exultant cry : 

"Viva Bayamo's coming ! 

The gallant marquis' coming ! 
Down with the Spanish hirelings ! Let the invaders 
die!" 

Is it Echo's voice replying 

From the woods all sombre lying ? 
No ; yonder down the hillside, beyond our distant 
right, 

A thousand men are rushing, 

Each patriot cheek is flushing, 
Each eye ecstatic dancing, at the glory of the sight. 



LAS TUNAS. 163 

Some galloping on horses, 

Some as the greyhound courses, 
They fall with sudden slaughter on the wavering volun- 
teers, 

Back on their centre reeling, 

With many a wild appealing, 
While the battle-cry of Cuba is ringing in their ears. 

Over unnumbered corses 

Sweep our united forces. 
Quesada and the marquis are charging side by side. 

A thousand gallants more 

Join from the river shore. 
Not all the Spanish legions can stem that roaring tide. 

The phalanx grim and serried 

Of regulars is buried 
In the rush, as countless surges a sand- wall overwhelm. 

Far from his gun in fear 

Flies the pale cannoneer, 
And the storm-tost flags are whirling like a ship without 
a helm. 

Far from the coveted mountains 

That hide the river fountains, 
Down to the distant ocean the boastful foe is borne 

(Yet bravely have they striven), 

And our vivas rend high heaven 
As the blazing star of Yara goes careering grandly on. 

Theirs are the pains and dolors, 
And ours the guns and colors, 



j64 LAS TUNAS. 

And the arms that dot the valley and strew the scene 
of strife, 
Ours the victor's glory, 
And ours the stirring story 
That lends a thrill of rapture to the years of peaceful 
life. 

But in many a mountain Aidenn 

Some olive-tinted maiden 
By the orange-grove is listening for her lover's lone 
guitar ; 

And many a wife is gasping, 

The wayside plantain grasping, 
In eager terror waiting for tidings from the war. 

Ah, well, from other fingers 

The maid that yonder lingers 
May learn to love the music as well as his that died ; 

And time the grief will mellow, 

And soothe the aching pillow, 
Of her whose mate is sleeping by the Verde's crimson 
side. 

The dearer is the offering, 

The nobler is the proffering, 
And all that's worth the winning is won by sacrifice. 

The land is ruined that falters, 

For Freedom's holy altars 
Require a rich oblation for each transcendent prize. 

Spurning all hesitation, 
The young Minerva nation 



SPRIiVG'S TREASURY. ^5 

Has flung into the conflict treasure and heart and sword. 

Liberty's fight, she's fought it; 

Liberty's work, she's wrought it ; 
Still works and strives in darkness without one cheering 
word. 

1871. 



SPRING'S TREASURY. 

Far in the Southland warm and blest 
Dwells the Queen whom we love the best. 
There, by a wealth of luxurious gold 
Swathed and sheltered from harm and cold, 
In a budding beauty that never dies, 

Slumber a thousand blooms divine ; 
And some are ruddy as evening skies, 

And some in a flaming crimson shine. 
Through the gladsome round of the circling hours 

The goddess walks in her gay parterre, 
And they grow more lovely, the lovely flowers, 

At the very thought of her presence there. 
Crocus and hyacinth, lily and rose, 

Snowdrop, anemone, columbine, 
With every zephyr that softly flows, 

Sway like censers before a shrine. 
Many a bowerie's velvet screen 

Opens to give her room to pass ; 
And rippling waves of shadowy green 

Frolic over the bladed grass. 
1871. 



5 



1 66 LOVE AND LIFE. 



LOVE AND LIFE. 

Love is like a flowing river, 

Broad and wondrous fair. 
On its breast the sunbeams quiver, 

Sparkling everywhere. 
How the far cerulean mountains 

Smile upon its birth, 
As the happy-hearted fountains, 

Laughing, dance to earth ! 

Dwell within its mystic shadows 

Visions never told, 
Purple isles, elysian meadows, 

Realms of cloudy gold. 
In its ruffled expanse glassing, 

Wanders mutely by 
All the holy whiteness, massing 

Warm in yonder sky. 

Titan power that stream possesses, 

Ay, and sorely needs. 
Farther down are stagnant places, 

Full of tangled weeds, 
Sickly with the fragrance vapid 

Of the lily's breath, 
And the raving, roaring rapid 

Strives for life and death. 

Comes the gloom of cliffs o'erbending, 

And the dizzying whirl, 
And the breathless interblending 

In a shower of pearl, 



LOVE AND LIFE. ^7 

'Mid the rainbow's mocking wonders 

And the deafening roar 
Of a thousand wrangling thunders 

Lost for evermore. 



Life is like a goodly prairie 

Decked with wondrous flowers, 
Ever blooming, never chary, 

Fresh from Eden bowers. 
But the thorns among the roses 

Sorely, deeply wound, 
And a nearer view discloses 

Rough and broken ground. 

Slowly from the dreamy river 

An enchanted mist 
Rises like a spirit, ever 

Tinged with amethyst. 
Round us blooms a world elysian, 

Countless glories blaze ; 
Such a glamour o'er our vision 

Casts that wondrous haze. 

Change the amethyst to sable, 

All is dark of hue. 
Gold, and lo, Aladdin's fable 
Bursts upon the view. 
• Love it is that drapes in anguish 
Bliss or earnest strife, 
Hopes that gleam, or doubts that languish, 
All our life. 
1871. 



1 68 BORDER BEN. 



BORDER BEN. 

Never a man in Bates or Cass 

Could stand the force of his swinging blow. 
Many a trim Missouri lass 

Rued his wooing in shame and woe : 
He cared for nothing on earth below ; 

He dreaded nothing in heaven above; 
His wrath was deadly to friend or foe, 

But deadlier still was his evil love. 

Neither a Reb nor a Yank was he, 

But a bushwhacker, bred to trick and trade ; 
For well he loved the lord to be 

Of his own true rifle and bowie-blade. 
And when he rode with his reckless band, 

Whisky-wild and mad for a fray, 
You had thought him the son of an older land, 

The robber-chief of an earlier day. 

But there came a time when the war was o'er, 

And neighbor and brother could meet once more, 

Together warm by the fireside glow, 

Clear together the winter snow, 

Reap together, together sow, 

And all with only a passing frown 

Or a brawl in harvest-field or town 

(The petty quarrels of daily life), 

To tell of the vanished years of strife. 

Peace had returned to the hearts of men, 

All save the spirit of Border Ben. 



BORDER BEN. ^9 

But he for many another day 

Rode and rieved at his own wild will, 
Bearing ever his luckless prey 

To the cabin under the rounding hill, 
For the law was weak, and his arm was strong. 
Men talked of lynching, — and was it wrong? 
But others counselled to bide their time, 

As the Chilian watches, still and long, 
Waiting and waiting in hope to lime 
The condor-king of his mountain clime, 

And none was ready to lead the throng. 

'Twas a luckless day that threw in his way 

Willoughby's Fan, on her snowy mare. 
Willoughby's Fan ! Mortal man 

Never saw feature or form more fair. 
After the backwoods fashion dressed, 

With hands, and feet to the ankle, bare, 
A straw sun-bonnet that lay at rest 

On a rippling river of golden hair, 
And over her limbs and over her breast 

A gown of calico, clinging there ; 

And still the truest of head and heart, 
The sweetest, the purest, the dearest girl, 

Scarcely as yet a full-blown woman ! 

With a face that smiled as the waters curl, 
And a voice that soothed as the waters purl, 

And lips that parted as lovers part, — 

Thoroughly good and kind and human ! 

I cannot tell you just how he found her, — 
Her sturdy, hearty, and daring brother, — 
15* 



170 BORDER BEN. 

But all the grasses and green things round her 

Were rudely trampled and overturned. 
Her breath came in gasps, like a nightmare smother, 
Or a fitful wind through a stifling pall, 
And wild was her bosom's rise and fall, 
As the flickering light of a dying spark, 
And on her throat was a fearful mark, 

A purple mark that throbbed and burned, — 
The mark of a sinewy male right hand. 

She lay in the shade of the moist woodland. 

High overhead the branches sighed, 

And the golden-shaft drummed and the wood-tapper 
cried, 
And flowerets round her pretty feet 
Bowed in sympathy sad and sweet 
For the little, pitiful, human flower, 

Fragrant and fit for a king to cherish, 
Plucked for less than a forceful hour 

And flung by the wayside there, to perish. 

" Poor little Fannie !" — Dan burst forth — 

"Who is the fiend that has done this thing? 
I'll follow him to the end of the earth ; 

I'll teach him how border bullets sting; 
I'll send him down to the flames of hell ! 

Yes, God above us in yonder sky, 
You God who looked on this lonesome dell 

And saw what happened when none was nigh, — 
Saw it and knew it, and would not save ! — 

By You I swear, whatever You are, 
To hound that devil into his grave, 

To send him down to his hellish den. 



BORDER BEN. I7 I 

— But tell me, sister, the villain's name." 
Faltering faintly the answer came, 
With a gush of tears and of lambent shame, 
Of shame and sorrow and pain and dread, 
As half arising she bowed her head. 

Sobbing and weeping she answered, " Ben." 

It was night, black night, when they reached the 

farm, 
And she slid from her hold on her brother's arm, 
And forward fell at her mother's feet, 
Anxiously coming her child to greet, 
At the feet of her mother and gray-haired sire 

Bent and broken by toil and age ; 
And Dan found words in his strangling ire — 

Hoarse words, harsh muttered and dense with rage — 
To tell the story of Ben's desire, 
To hint the whole of that fearful harm. 

" But as sure as ever there's God in the skies, 

I'll hunt that devil till one of us dies." 

There came a knock at the door. 

Forward he stepped and flung it open. 

By a sudden flash was the darkness broken. 

Followed a sharp quick " Spang !" 

Then a loud laugh outrang. 
Young Willoughby lay on the floor. 
And over the threshold, beside the corse, 
By the bridle still holding his peering horse, 
A revolver smoking yet in his hand, 
And looking as when he led his band, 
Proud with the pride of the devil's den, 
Strode handsome, hideous Border Ben. 



172 



BORDER BEN. 



He gazed a moment with mocking leer, 
He spoke a moment with cruel jeer, 
Then turned and leaped to saddle, and then . 
Vanished out of their stricken sight, 
Wildly galloping through the night. 

That was the night of his evil star, 

For Border Ben had gone too far. 

With a thirsty glare that craved his blood, 

That star came dancing through the wood, 

And out on the prairie where all was still 

Save the cricket's chirp and the whippoorwill — 

It had grown to a torch of fire: 
And under its smoky, billowy light 
A score of horsemen rode that night, 
With brows that knotted and hands that clenched, 
And if so be there were cheeks that blenched, 
They were not fully revealed to sight, — 

Nought was revealed but ire. 

Alone and hopeless and brought to bay, — 

They had trailed him to his lair, — 
Sustained by only the thirst to slay, 
And scorn for the men who had been his prey, 

He fought like a grizzly bear. 
Every stroke claimed limb or life ; 
Every thrust of his ghastly knife 
Sent plashing on the slippery floor 
Pool after pool of human gore. 

But at last he was stunned and tied. 
Powerless longer to work them harm, 
And spouting crimson from head and arm, 

They hurried him then outside. 



BORDER BEN. 1 73 

They bore him off to the neighboring wood, 

Conscious, but weak from the loss of blood, 

Sullen and silent, but all uncowed 

In the midst of that jeering harrying crowd, 

Without' a fear or a thought of hope, 

Or a glance at that heaven whose boundless scope 

Spread so grandly over them all, 

That heaven reserved for his only pall, 

His only coffin and shroud and bier, 

The only source from which a tear 

Could ever fall on his blanching heart, 

Without a tremor, or sob, or start, 

Without a sorrow, without a prayer, 

He went with his executioners there. 

Down in the woodlands, sombre and dim, 

A rope was hanging over a limb : 

The noose at the end had been made for him. 

They triced him up, and they swung him off. 
A sudden spasm ; a gurgling cough ; 
A furious wrenching his hands to free ; 
Feet that kicked from the doubling knee ; 
Eyes that bulged in the dark unviewed ; 
Bowed neck and straightening attitude ; 
And then a tremor, and then, and then — 
That was the last of Border Ben. 
1871. 



i 7 4 



THE RIDE OF THE SEVENTH CAVALRY. 



THE RIDE OF THE SEVENTH CAV- 
ALRY. 

Out across the waste of prairie, 

Soft savannas, uplands airy, 

Ragged gulches tracked by no man, 
Rocky passes grim and hoar, 

With the phantom of a foeman 
Ever flitting on before, 
Rode they seventy miles and more. 

Home' behind, but hope within them ; 
Strifes ahead, and strength to win them ; 
Full of life and dauntless spirit, 
Eager for the prize of merit, 
Ringing out a pleasant tune 
In the merry sun of June, 
Weapons flashing, clanging, clashing, 
Banner floating far and free, — 
Rode the Seventh Cavalry. 

Seventy miles — their steeds were jaded, 
And the glory waned and faded, 
As the staring sun, unshaded, 

Drained their spirits more and more. 
Listless grew their mien, and haggard, 
Backward trailed the troopers laggard, 
And the column almost staggered 

As it slowly onward bore. 
All around the cactus thickets 
Stood, presenting thorny pickets, 



THE RIDE OF THE SEVENTH CAVALRY. 

And the hillocks high and lonely 

Beckoned on and on, but only 

Opened an endless way 

To the far bluff-lands gray. 

Never a note of bird 

In the dull march was heard ; 

Never a streamlet sang ; 

Never a wild deer sprang ; 

All, all was weariness and disarray. 

Sudden as start the quickened dead, 
Rouses every drooping head. 
Every pulse is madly thrilling, 
Every voice the message shrilling — 
Swift it speeds from front to rear — 
That at last the foe is near. 
Yonder, mounted, on the hill, 
Sits the leader strong and still, 
One hand resting on the mane, 
One hand pointing to the plain, 
His face turned backward glowing, 
His sunlit hair outflowing : 
Oh, grand chivalric bearing ! 
Oh, heart that died in daring ! 

Over a line of blue 

Where the river wound its way, 
Under the trees wherethrough 

The sunlight shot its ray, 
In the lap of the valley gay 
The Indian city lay, — 
A city to move in a night, 

A city of pole and tent, 



175 



I 7 6 THE RIDE OF THE SEVENTH CAVALRY. 

That had dropped like a bird from its flight 

On the heart of the continent. 

Full four miles it spread, 

Flapping with blankets red 
That were given to purchase peace 
From a war which never shall cease 
While the Sioux and the white man meet. 
And on the ground underfeet 
Lay the ruthless spoils and pillage 
Of many a border village, 
And many a scalp-lock bright, 
Won in the dead of night, 

Danced in the air overhead. 

The cavalry shouted again, 

And they dashed from the hill to the plain. 

Tired sinews grew strong with the rush, 

As they burst the thick hedges of brush, 

Rattling down, scattering stones left and right 

Like sparkles struck out in the night. 

The scabbards swung loose at their sides, 
Clattered loudly on leather and hides. 
The carbines that swayed at their backs, 
The whirlwind of dust in their tracks, 

The blades that flashed out in the sun, 
And the beat of the feet on the rock, 
As it rang with the clang and the shock, 

And the peal of the steel on the stone ! 

The pebbles sped lightly before 
As they smote on the silvery shore. 
From pastern and fetlock and hoof 



THE RIDE OF THE SEVENTH CAVALRY. 

The spray-drops flew outward like rain, 
As it flies from the edge of the roof, 

As it splashes from panel and pane. 
Saddle-deep in the ford, 
With revolver and sword, 

They were plunging right onward amain. 

Suddenly all the woodlands hoar 
Were filled with an infernal roar, 
Which, rising more and more and more, 

Appalled the invaders' ear, 
With yell and whoop and shriek and cry, 
And sounds of discord wild and high, 
While every open space of sky 
Hell's portal seemed, that shocked the eye 

With hideous shapes of fear. 
For every tree-trunk leaped to life 
With painted Sioux and scalping-knife, 

And rifle poised with care. 
Up from the sedgy bank they start, 
Out from the thicket's treacherous heart, 

The boughs strange fruitage bear. 
On either side, above, below, 
The stream swarms with the howling foe, 

The river boils with lead ; 
And many a trooper, smitten down 
By sudden bolt through breast or crown, 

Drops headlong to its bed. 
Small time to reckon friends or foes, 
A countless horde the front enclose, 
With brandished tomahawk and spear 
A host come sweeping on our rear — 

Let dead men guard the dead ! 
16 



177 



I7 8 THE RIDE OF THE SEVENTH CAVALRY. 

Ride for life, ride for life ! 
Sink the spur ; ply the knife ; 
Urge them on, urge them on — 
'Tis their last race they run. 
How the balls whistle by ! 
Knotted brow, staring eye ! 
Did he fall ? — Look not back, 
There are fiends on the track. 
And they gain — ah, they gain ! 
How they skim o'er the plain ! 
How they crowd left and right ! 
And in front, what a sight ! 
All is lost ; cease the flight. 

Tliey circled round the little hill ; 
They wheeled about, and then sat still, 
With iron hand and iron will, — 

Each in his company. 
A welded ring for woe or weal, 
A ring of horse and man and steel 
And lightning-flash and thunder-peal, 

Stood the SeventhjCavalry. 

Round them and round a host of Sioux, 
With taunting yell and wild halloo 
And tossing spears and blankets, flew, — 

Whirlwind of devilry ! 
Now stretched beside the tossing mane, 
Now all astart with sudden pain, 
Now crashing madly o'er the plain 

Straight at their enemy. 

The carbines flashed around the line, 
As bursts the blaze from mountain pine, 



JOSEPH THE NEZ PERCE. 179 

Or the red leaping of the mine 

Glares o» the scenery. 
Three thousand rifles answering rang, 
The hurtling chaos inward sprang, 
Sabres swooped out with clash and clang, 

Sang the steel savagely. 

Firm to the last, they fought and fell, 

While round them, o'er them, broke the swell 

'Of that triumphant sea of hell, 

Smiting relentlessly. 
Three hundred corses gleaming white 
In glare of noon and gloom of night, 
With eyeballs staring broad and bright — 

Lo, the Seventh Cavalry ! 



1876. 



JOSEPH THE NEZ PERCE. 

From the Northern desolation 

Comes a cry of exultation, 
" It is ended! He has yielded! And the stubborn 
fight is won." 

Let the nation in its glory 

Bow with shame before the story 
Of the hero it has ruined and the evil it has done. 

How he prayed while hope remained, 

Though the white man's hand was stained 
With the blood, that cried for vengeance, of his mur- 
dered kin and clan, 

For the home the good God gave him, 

And the treaty swore to save him, 
For a shelter for his children, for the right to be a man ! 



180 JOSEPH THE NEZ PERCE. 

Then the troops began to hound him, 
And he wrapped his blanket round him, 
And he called his braves to follow, and he smote them 
hip and thigh. 
But the hosts grew vast and vaster, 
And the whirlwind of disaster 
Drove him out across the mountains and beneath an 
alien sky. 

Through the continental ridges, 
Over tottering torrent-bridges, 
By the verge of black abysses, in the shade of moun- 
tains hoar, 
Herds and wives and children bearing, 
Months they journeyed, toiling, daring, 
With an army trailing after and another crouched 
before. 

Thrice the sudden blow descended, 
Roar and flash and crashing blended : 
Twice the rearguard faced and checked them till the 
hunted tribe was free. 
Once he reeled, but swiftly rallied, 
Forth upon the spoilers sallied, 
Drove them headlong into shelter, captured all their 
cannonry. 

But the mountains could not shield him, 
And the snowy heights revealed him, 
And the false friends would not aid him, and his goal 
was far away. 
Hampered by his weak and wounded, 
Stripped and harried and surrounded, 
Still the chieftain [of the Northland like a lion stood 
at bay. 



ROSE. 181 

From the freedom that he sought for, 
From the dear land that he fought for, 
He is riven by a nation that has spurned its plighted 
word, 
By the Christians who have given 
To the heathen — gracious Heaven ! — 
With the one hand theft and falsehood, with the other, 
ball and sword. 
1877. 



ROSE. 

Dear little three-year-old sportsman of mine, 
Queen of the woodland, my merry-heart Rose ! 

See how the starry eyes sparkle and shine : 
Out with Papa to the shooting she goes. 

Gentle gray Alice trots briskly ahead ; 

Rover is ranging the fields by our side ; 
Through the red ragweed you see his white head ; 

Waves the long fringe like a plume in its pride. 

Whoa ! Here's the stubble — now look to the lines ; 

Sportsman and gun they are gone with a bound ; 
How in the sunlight old Silky-hair shines, 

Velvety nostrils held close to the ground ! 

Twisting and trailing. Hi ! steady, boy, there ! 

Standing — I thought so — as carven in stone ! 
"Steady, boy, steady !" — the hazel eyes glare, 

Lifts the quick ear as he catches the tone. 
16* 



1 82 ROSE. 

Note the neck arched to his quivering side, 
Nostrils expanded, and motionless tail, 

Stiff-spreading limbs, as if stemming a tide, 
Firm as the ash in the midsummer gale. 

Beautiful, sure, is his spotless attire — 

Hark ! a loved voice chides my lingering foot. 

" What is Papa doing? Why don't he fire ? 
What is Papa doing? Shoot, Papa, shoot !" 

Drops the quick lark as he springs from the meadow, 
Falls the swift dove as he dives through the air, 

Shower the blackbirds like handfuls of shadow, — 
Little Queen Rose takes them all to her care. 

Onward we drive. I can hear her behind me 
Prattling the fables that childhood loves well. 

" Baby-bird ; mother-bird" — how they remind me 
Of the great secrets that science can tell ; 

How through the ages the instincts eternal 
Flow to the child from the ancestor's frame: 

Comes from the mother the love ever vernal. 
What from the father ? — The hunger for game. 

Well, there's a showing ! — I hear her, unseen, 
Pleading my cause in the realm where she rules : 

"Poor little birdie, Papa didn't mean — 

Wouldn't hurt birdie" — my zeal how it cools ! 

"Poor little bunny, right there in the nose ! 

Did Papa shoot him ? — Oh, bad Papa, bad ! 
Was he a bad Papa?" — Hush, little Rose : 

Let us stop preaching, and play and be glad. 



ROSE. ig 3 

Questions like yours may be answered in time. 

Are we not made to be eaten and eat ? 
Death to the feeble, — conception sublime ! — 

Life to the strong and the bold and the fleet ! 

Tangled we are in a mystical skein : 

Right melts in wrong, and the wrong turns to right : 
Soon comes a sportsman to shoot it in twain, 

Plunging us all in the darkness of night. 

Bright little Rose, I remember right well 

How you first shrank at the sight of the dead, 

Though but a bird. — Did some mystical spell 

Stretch from that blankness its hand o'er thy head ? 

Who could have taught thee to feel the dread foe ? 

Who could have warned thee to shudder and fear? 
Now the dull tread wakes no echoes of woe. 

Now the weird tokens are petted and dear. 

Wondrous ! How soon the mysterious voices 
Born with the soul become voiceless and dumb ! 

Only three years, yet she laughs and rejoices : — 
Still booms the warning of evil to come. 

Yet one would fancy the bird he had stricken 

Endeth not all with its suffering here ; 
Yet one must feel, when the darling ones sicken, 

Life, and not death, fills the round of the sphere. 

Death is but death to the walking or flying ; 

Life is still life in its gladness and joy. 
Why should we question (what need of replying ?) 

Happier future for bird and for boy ? 

Christmas, 1877. 



1 84 THE ISLE OF KENT. 



THE ISLE OF KENT. 

Merrily shines the summer sun 

Over the isle of Kent ; 
Merrily chasing, the ripples run, 
Frolic the breezes in airy fun, 
Robin, wren, mocking-bird every one 

Join in the merriment. 

But here in the oak-trees' solemn shade, 
Where the sentinel cedars stand, 

The old, old church that the fathers made 

Looms forsaken and disarrayed, 
Frowning on Maryland. 

Where the voice of praise went ringing free, 

The fox has made his home ; 
The wild-bee hives in the sacristy ; 
And the spectral moon looks in to see 
The white-faced owl at his ministry 

In the heart of the chancel gloom. 

Where are the faces, grave and gay, 

Of many a vanished year? 
Cumbrous coaches and quaint array, 
Priests and people, ah, where are they ? 
The tide of time has ebbed away, 

And has left it stranded here. 

Yet the days have been when its shadow fell 

Far by the Severn side, 
And the battered remnant that fought so well 
Gladly came in that shade to dwell 

Over the gleaming tide. 



THE ISLE OF KENT. 185 

The bay is dotted with flecks of white, 

For the fleet has come again. 
But the Golden Lion is broad and bright, 
And the village wakes to the stir of fight, 
And the answer rings like a peal at night, — 

" We will live or die like men." 

I see the Commonwealth standard fly, 

And the cross that mocks the sun. 
" Hey for Saint Mary's !" the Catholics cry ; 
And I hear the Puritans' strong reply, 

" In the name of God, fall on." 

It passes. Out on the darkened air 

Rings a peal of noisy glee ; 
'Mid the thunder's crash and the lightning's glare 
The red-coats hold in the chancel bare 

Their godless revelry. 

Again there cometh a solemn boom 

Over the glancing bay. 
The great walls shudder, the hollow tomb 
Adds its voice to that sound of gloom : 
Brothers are dealing their brothers' doom 

In the battle far away. 

The wars they come, and the wars they go, 

As the centuries journey by, 
But the old church stands in weal or woe, 
In the summer sun or the winter snow, 
In the wild wind's sweep or the zephyr's flow, 

With its stern, unwinking eye. 



jS6 the problem. 

And gazing out from the sombre pines 

Over the waters clear, 
A deeper meaning my heart divines ; 
I seem to read in the battered lines 
That something greater than stones and shrines 

Is keeping a vigil here. 
1878. 



THE PROBLEM. 

FIRST VOICE. 

In His image God hath moulded man, 
Hence our likeness through the veil we scan ; 
Vaster, grander, but the self-same plan. 

Hear the rumbling of His chariot run. 

Smiles He in the brightness of the sun. 

Frowns He ere the tempest has begun. 
In the land of Beersheba and Dan 

Lofty souls to clearer vision won. 
Just, His promise stands for evermore, 

Yet with lightning-stroke His arm subdues. 
Countless blessings on the faithful pour ; 

Sire to son His jealous wrath pursues. 

Friendship, foeship, ye are free to choose. 
God, great God, we tremble and adore. 

SECOND VOICE. 

Man has cast his shadow on the skies, 
Fringed it round with gorgeous draperies, 

Bowed him down and worshipped it in awe. 

Blurs, not visions, were the shapes he saw. 



THE PROBLEM. 187 

Toiling slow, the patient seeker tries, 

Link by link, to trace the chain of law. 
But beyond his utmost reach there lies 
Still the gateless wall of mysteries. 
What is God? The spirit of the Now ; 

Mainspring of the future drawing near; 
Fountain of the past ; the Why and How ; 

Cause; Force; Order: nothing more is clear. 

One great question rings our little sphere ; 

And the answer never greets us here. 

THIRD VOICE. 

Through the mist there comes one little ray, — 
Earth and heaven are pitiless and gray, — 
Surely, surely, it will soon be day. 

Hope will brighten into life anew, 

Earth be green again, and waters blue, — 

Shall I shut the glimmer from my view ? 
Dimmed and stained and broken on the way, 

Still from being's very fount it flew. 
All the noblest in our nature blending 

Makes an image we can well adore : 
Past the wall the olden skies are bending ; 

Still the ocean mirrors as before : 
God the spirit, mounting, not descending ; 

God, grand God, we worship evermore. 
[878. 



1 88 CHRISTABEL. 

CHRISTABEL. 

THIRD PART. 

In continuation of Coleridge's Poem. 

De Bracy has sought the forest lone. 

The sun like a fire burns high in heaven ; 
But the breath of the aisles by the mossy stone 

Is light and sweet as the soul that's shriven. 
Seven dim archways centre there ; 
Seven red flowers are blooming rare ; 
And the chaliced mosses gray and brown 
Have,wrought on the stone a cross and crown. 
A spot where hermit that crown might win ! 
—But De Bracy's soul grew chill within. 

Why is the ring that his lady gave 
Cloudy and dull as the turbid wave ? 
Why does the harp that his lady strook 
Quiver and strain beneath his look ? 
Thrice came the cock-crow faint and shrill, 
And he heard a sound like a fairy rill, 
And a wild-bird's murmur — and all was still. 
De Bracy's heart was numb with fear. 
"Surely," he thought, "the saints are near." 
So he dashed a cross on heart and brow, 
With a hurried prayer that was half a vow : 
" Save from the blight that is doubly chill ; 
From the ill in good that is worse than ill." 

There came an answer fine and clear ; 
It stirred not nerve, it touched not ear : 



CHR1STABEL. ^9 

Bat De Bracy's heart grew light and strong, 

And he struck the chords, and he raised his song. 

I ween that song contained a spell 

To rive the very deeps of hell ; 

And the harp but thrilled to my lady's lore 

As it thrilled in the holy days of yore. 

For the lady sang by bell and book, 

And fiends, affrighted, fled her look. 

Yet she had said they would work her ill 

When her soul was free and her heart was chill. 

In her lovely child she was living still. 

But higher potency is thine, 
O harp, that poet arms entwine, 
And poet fingers strike the strings 
Leaping with fine imaginings : 
For, whatsoever worldlings deem, 
The lily maiden's purest dream, 
The crooning mother's heart of love, 
The warrior's storm-embattled glove, 
Who fights to save the cross of God 
And falls victorious on the sod, 
May each some secret gain, of power 
To aid it in the wizard hour, 
From the high inspiration given 
To bards by holiest happiest Heaven. 

The stone with its chaliced cross had stood 
Moveless for aye in the haunted wood, 
Though hermit summoned with sign and prayer 
And the saints of Mary were chanting there. 
But De Bracy's voice and De Bracy's eye 
Thrilled like the flames of the Northern sky 
With the very magic of minstrelsy. 
17 



I9 CHRJSTABEL. 

And a ray of sunshine, that had played 

Through the web of boughs on the shadowed glade, 

Suddenly shifted, dancing on 

The crown and the cross and the great gray stone ; 

And they heaved and swayed with the dancing light, 

And a portal opened before his sight, 

A portal dim and dank and dread 

As the door that leads to the Christless dead. 

One gleam of light came creeping through ; 

But the light was pale and the light was blue. 

Into the portal strode the bard. 

The slippery pave rang loud and hard. 

The echoes answered o'er and o'er, 

The echoes answered — and something more; 

And he turned with a cry to the closing door. 

But the great gray stone came to with a clang, 

As though some vast portcullis rang, 

In an unholy paynim hold, 

Behind a champion rashly bold, 

Shut from the sun and the breezes free, 

Snared in the den of sorcery. 

Then he heard the echoes laugh and roar 

Down gallery-roof, and wall, and floor. 

Ay, he heard the echoes — and something more. 

But he clenched his teeth, and he set his brow, 
And he drew in his breath, and he thought a vow, 
And he strode right on down the archway dim, 
Nor looked behind in the shadows grim; 
But his breath came in with a hissing sound, 
And he could not, durst not, turn him round. 
Brighter and brighter the wizard blue, 
Broader and broader the pale light grew. 



CHRISTABEL. 

As a miner lost in the mazy mine 

Follows the gnome-light's mocking shine, 

He strode to the cell and the cross and shrine. 

De Bracy stopped till the echoes died, 
And looked in silence from side to side. 
He saw the walls of stone so bare 
Strangely white in that bluish glare : 
He saw the recess curtained and dim, 
The cushion dimpled by kneeling limb, 
The censer that swung with a lazy motion 
Like the heaving waves of a summer ocean ; 
But there was no hand on the censer chain, 
And the still blue light of the tapers twain 

Gave to the face of the Christ between 
A look of mockery more than pain : 

Forth from the cross he seemed to lean, 
And gloat on the lily's burning stain. 
The lily stood in a chalice of gold, 
Quaintly wrought with devices old. 
De Bracy knew that blossom well, — 
It was the flower of Christabel. 

Under the chalice lay a scroll, 

Half a sheet, and half a roll. 

De Bracy spread it flat and thin, 

And he bowed his head, and he read therein : 

" For an hour and an hour and an hour 

Shall the spell have power, — 

The spell of the withered breast, 
And the spell of the heart that is dead, 
And the serpent soul shall shed 
Its pain and its shame and its dread, 

And slumber and be at rest, 



191 



192 



CHRISTABEL. 



Holy and pure and free, 

And the sin on the sinless shall be 

For an hour and an hour and an hour." 

Reading, ever he looked askance, 

With furtive, questioning, troubled glance ; 

For he saw the shadows to and fro 

On the wall of the chamber come and go. 

But there was not the sound of the lightest tread, 

And nought appeared when he raised his head. 

He snatched from the chalice the blasted flower, 

And its petals fell in a pearly shower. 

Close to the calyx, beside the stem, 

Clung a vivid and burning gem. 

De Bracy knew that ruddy shine, 

And he called on the Lady Geraldine. 

The echoes answered him o'er and o'er — 

Was it Echo only, or something more ? 

Surely there came with the sting of fear 

A child's fine treble merry and clear ; 

Laughing notes like a silver bell 

Rung in the very heart of hell : 

Words nor meaning he could not guess, 

But a tiger's yell had stirred him less. 

Then he felt the deadly silence flow 

In on his soul like a flood of woe ; 

And the shadows kept moving to and fro. 

But he battled bravely with heart and eye, 

And he shrieked aloud with a mighty cry, 

"In the name of the Christ and the cross and the 

shrine, 
I summon thee, Lady Geraldine." 

Then he heard a rustling behind, but near, 
And a rich voice murmured, " Lo, I am here." 



CHRIS TAB EL. 



193 



The tapers blazed with a livid glare ; 

And he turned, and a lady was standing there — 

The lady it seemed of the old oak-tree — 

In the awsome beauty of sorcery. 

The lady was veiled from foot to crown 

In a priestly strangely-pictured gown, 

Save where a fold with wanton art 

Opened just above her heart, 

And a bosom showed like the morning snow 

In the first soft flush of its early glow ; 

For the stir of the blood through the tender skin 

Shone with the warmth of a living sin. 

Bard of the spirit pure and high, 

Of the holy quest and the knightly eye, 

Fallen, how fallen ! Has ill such power 

That a handbreadth space of rounded snow, 
Though lit by that inner evil glow, 
Can sting the soul as it stung the flower? 

De Bracy strove with the blinding spell, 
And he called on the mother of Christabel. 
But the lady stepped to his tingling side : 
" Choose ye between us," she said, and sighed ; 
" Choose ye between us, the maid and me." 
And he dropped at her feet on his bended knee. 
Then he heard again, like a silver bell, 
That laugh, like a child in the heart of hell. 
And ere it ended, there spread, I wist, 
Swift through his veins a stinging mist, 
For his brow felt the pressure of lips that kissed, 
And he sprang to his feet with a hungry glare, 
And tore the gown from her shoulders bare, 
17* 



I94 CHRISTABEL. 

From limb and visage and streaming hair, 

And he viewed — what viewed he standing there ? 

He smote his hand on his stricken eye, 

And reeled to the floor with a rending cry. 

What had he seen ? I may not say ; 

For he never told till his dying day. 

I doubt De Bracy no more had known 

The sunny court or the woodland lone, 

But that his arm, as it struck the floor, 

Dashed, unwitting, the harp-strings o'er, 

And struck a note of the solemn tune 

Which his lady played by the waning moon — 

His lady feared by the lords of hell, 

The lovely mother of Christabel. 

It was but a note, but the harp played on, 

And he knew whose fingers the strings had won, 

What viewless vigil beside him kept, 

And e'en in his dizzy trance he wept ; 

For he felt that the power of the hidden ill 

By the unseen good shall be baffled still. 

Hour by hour the harp-strings played, 

Then ceased ; and he rose in the haunted glade. 

The moon was shining pale and lone 

On the crown and the cross of the great gray stone ; 

And the seven red flowers blooming rare 

Had closed their cups on the cool night air ; 

And down the archways long and dim 

The wail of the owlet came to him. 

Then from the castle far away 

He heard the mastiff's sullen bay. 

Four for the quarter, and twelve for the hour; 

It was the season when fiends have power. 



CHRISTABEL. 1 95 

He rose, and tottered, and feebly fled, 

For his heart was heavy as molten lead, 

And a fever burned in his throbbing head. 

Shall he brave the wrath of Sir Leoline 

And the beauteous lady Geraldine ? 

Shall he tell of the cell and the cross and shrine, 

Of the flower and the scroll and the wizard vest, 

And the burning spell of the rosy breast ? 

Shall he say, " 'Tvvas only thy child to free 

That I left the errand thou gavest me?" 

He could not tell, but he stumbled on 

Through the shadowy woods and the moonlight wan, 

Till hard by the open halted he, 

And full in front lay the old oak-tree. 

Two lovely ladies there he spied, 

Kneeling sisterly side by side. 

One was a maiden soft and fair, 

And one had jewels on neck and hair ; 

And he thought on the ruddy gem that clung 

To the heart of the lily and burned and stung. 

Then he knew that the maiden Christabel 

Had sought to flee from the hated spell, 

And pass in prayer by the holy tree 

The hour of sin and sorcery ; 

And the smiling Lady Geraldine 

Had followed her out in the clear moonshine, 

To kneel beside her sisterwise, 

And peer in the depths of her pleading eyes, 

And lead her back to her virgin room 

For an hour of sorrow and sin and doom. 

They rose as he looked, and the maiden kept 

Her eyes on the ground, and in silence wept. 



196 



CHRISTABEL. 



But the jewelled lady turned her gaze 
Full on his face like a sudden blaze. 
The hot kiss stung his brow again, 
And the rosy bosom was like a pain. 
Her arm lay still, and her voice was dumb, 
But eye to eye said plainly, " Come." 
Then back o'er the barren moonlit land 
He saw them pacing hand in hand. 

Doubtful a moment De Bracy stood ; 
But the spell was fierce in his turbid blood ; 
And he slowly crept to the postern gate, 
As one who traileth a weary weight : 
Closed, it, and entered, and stilled the growl 
Of the mastiff bitch by his chiding scowl ; 
Stole like a ghost through the half-lit hall, 
Watching and harking for sign or call ; 
Then slowly on to the maiden's door : 
It was open, — the moon was on the floor. 

But will he cross that threshold now 

With the evil light in heart and brow? 

Maiden chamber to vilest thing 

Should be sacred and pure as a mountain spring, 

Blessed by saintly voice and hand, 

By the breath of the holy angels fanned. 

But most to him whom the mother gave 

(And swore to watch from her troubled grave) 

Charge to guard by harp and spell 

The lily maid whom she loved so well. 

De Bracy stopped in the hallway bare, 
And Christabel saw him standing there. 



CHRISTABEL. I97 

Dire must be a maiden's need 

When she leaps with joy, like a soul that's freed, 

At the sight of a man in the dead of night, 

Though a lovely lady is standing by. 
But she sprang from her couch in her robe of white, 
And she fell on her knees in the wan moonlight, 

With hands upclasping, and lifted eye, 
And hair down-streaming, and face as pale 
As a phantom navy's flying sail ; 

And she shrieked aloud with a sudden cry, 
" Save me, De Bracy, save, O save !" 
And again, like a scream from a bursting grave, 
" For the love of my mother, save, O save !" 

That cry of terror rent the chain 

Which had bound De Bracy' s heart and brain ; 

And he swore to save the maiden dear ; 

And he heard a whisper fine and clear, 

Though it stirred not nerve and it touched not ear, — 

"In and aid her, and have no fear." 

And as he stepped, he could feel the glide 

Of a viewless something by his side. 

But Geraldine in disarray, 

With sullen paleness, barred the way, 

And at every sweep of her rounded arm 
He caught a glimpse of that bosom old, 
The nightmare shield of a heart as cold ; 

And she chanted aloud her warning charm : 

" In spite of ye both, I have power 
For an hour and an hour and an hour, 

And forever, if it shall be 
That a sin of her own 
Joins the sin unknown, 



I9 8 CHRTSTABEL. 

The sin that she draws from me. 
For this I have given the heart 

That was warm as a heart should be, 

And the bosom fair to see, 
And have taken by magic art 

The bosom old 

And the heart that is cold, 
Where the red blood will not start. 

Already one hour is sped, 

Another will soon be fled ; 

But ere the third goes by 

She is lost eternally. 

For the sin on the sinless shall be, 

And peace shall abide with me, 
Not alone for an hour and an hour." 

" Not so !" he answered, " foul witch, I swear." 

Her eyes met his with a mocking stare, 

And she pointed back to the mirror rare. 

He saw therein his harp and frown, 

And behind — why moans he ? — the pictured gown. 

The bosom warm with a deadly sin, 

And the bending, ogling leer and grin, 

Over his shoulder, beside his ear. 

Now, bard, saints save thee, if saint be near. 

Twice that vision thy fate doth give : 

Man may not see it thrice and live. 

He crouched aside with stiffening hair, 

And he called on Christ in a silent prayer, 

And he dashed like mad to the hallway bare. 

But Christabel could nothing see, 
Save the lady of the old oak-tree, 



CHRISTABEL. 



199 



The chanting voice and the evil spell, 

The face of heaven and the soul of hell ; 

Yet she swooned like death in the pale moonshine 

And the arms of the Lady Geraldine. 



CONCLUSION OF THIRD PART. 

What could be more fine and rare 

Than the bard with waving hair 

In the dancing sunlight flowing, 

Brighter than the sunlight glowing, 

While the inspiration's flush 

Gave his cheek a happy blush, 

And his eager opening eye, 

Fixed upon the fainter sky, 

Let its holy message through 

Windows of a holier blue, 

And the stir of noble thought 

From his darting fingers caught 

(As it gave the throbbing strings) 

Life that soars and prays and sings ! 

Voice and finger, heart and brain, 

Soul and spirit, join the strain, — 

Echoes of the heavenly host, 

Breathings of the Holy Ghost ! 

Marvel not that the stone was swayed 

Which hid the cell by the haunted glade, 

Though seven dim archways centre there, 

And seven red flowers are blooming rare, 

And the stone is guarded by cross and crown 

Wrought in the mosses gray and brown. 

For the ill in good that is worse than ill 

May be baffled by subtler magic still. 



200 



CHRISTABEL. 



But now the bard is crouching low, 
Whelmed, o'erwhelmed by fear and woe, 
Straining ear for faintest cry, 
Daring not to venture nigh, 
Guarding in the empty hall, 
Lest the worst of ills befall. 
And oft his fingers sought the string 
And strove the subtle tones to bring, 
That spoke the power of his lady's lore 
When she sang in the holy days of yore. 
Sometimes there answered not a sound ; 
Sometimes a discord wailed around ; 
And anon the notes in a dulcet flood 
Stirred the riotous hectic blood, 
Till sin seemed pleasant and fair to see, 
And virtue folly, or not to be. 
Ah, many an eve in the mighty hall 
Shall the direful tale be told to all 
Of the night when the boding spirit wailed 
Through tower and gallery dimly veiled. 
But De Bracy steadily strove and prayed 
For the saints' of God and his Lady's aid : 
Till at last the notes came soft and clear, 
And they roused his spirit and laid his fear ; 
For he knew the wizard hour had fled — 
The second hour of the conflict dread, — 
And the maiden was free of deadly sin, 
And the serpent-soul had failed to win 
Surcease of shame and pain and sorrow. 
But a direr peril may wait the morrow. 
1878. 



THE PLAGUE-FLOWER. 2 oi 



THE PLAGUE-FLOWER. 

'Twas in a fever-dream I saw and knew 
Its mottled tiger-bloom of jaundiced gold, 

Its fleshy leaves that dropped with clammy dew, 
Its swarthy blotches hideous to behold. 

In the black, noisome marsh that horror grew, 

And slimy, snake-like weeds coiled round it, fold on 
fold. 

The heavy, starless, cypress roof o'erhead 
Left all below to fitful glare and gloom, 

Where danced the wayward witch-fires of the dead 
Like fiends carousing in a pillared tomb. 

The sagging vines and knotted knees upspread 

Took forms like those which haunt some murder- 
blasted room. 

A dense and deathly exhalation rose, 

Luminous with evil light, from pool and fen, 

Feeding the demon -flower, whose throbbing throes 
Greedily quaffed and quaffed that breath again. 

And in that mist I viewed unnumbered woes : — 

Wide desolate towns, waste fields, and crowds of 
maddened men ; 

The infant clinging to the stricken breast, 

Drawing death's potion from the fount of life ; 
The hidden corpse ; the sufferer's last behest 

Driving far from him mother, child, and wife ; 
The piteous prayers that vainly seek to wrest 

One priceless victim more from out the loathsome 
strife. 

18 



202 THE PLAGUE-FLOWER. 

I saw the face blaspheming turned to heaven ; 

The thin hand clutching in the empty air, 
Grappling a viewless palm ; the wanderer driven, 

Like olden lepers, to his wretched lair ; 
All genial human ties asunder riven ; 

The thieving hand; the knife; the torches' hovering 
glare. 

And round the rootlets of that dreadful flower 
The soil is full of shapes, a grisly throng. 

Some bear the bloody dagger-marks of power, 
And some the miry stains of meaner wrong. 

Some pale, some dusky ; there they writhe and cower, 
And feed the poisonous roots that cling and quaff 
and long. 

Yet, as I gazed, there came a sudden blast, 
Riving the night of foliage ; and the stars 

Looked down upon me ; and below them passed 
A pitying, radiant face, that told of wars 

Surmounted, and old hatred backward cast. 

The flowing robe of Peace had hidden all her scars. 

And from the crown that sparkled on her brow 
With jewels radiant as the Frost-King's throne, 

She shook a pearl and ruby ; and below 

They fell on the great bale-flower, shivering lone. 

The hairy stalk began to quake and bow, — 

And when I looked again, the spectral scene had 
flown. 

In a rich glade two flower-stems interwound 
Above the firm and healthful summer sod ; 



A VISION OF TO-MORROW. 



203 



The airs of heaven blew o'er them ; and around 
Bloomed the sky-pointing hopeful golden-rod ; 

And one was white, one sunny red, I found, 

And both were beautiful in the sight of man and 

God. 
1878. 



A VISION OF TO-MORROW. 

The mist that was white as a shroud 

Rolled away, and the Voice said, " Write.' 

Far through the rift in the cloud, 

Like a bird when the storm is loud, 
Darted my sight. 

I saw the things that have been, — 

A vision which all may see, — 
And the vision denied to men, 

The things that are yet to be ; 
And I shuddered, and veiled my sight ; 

Yet the Voice said, "Write." 

I saw the crowned Twain, 

Hand in hand, heart to heart, vein to vein, 

And the taller was fair as the sun, 

And the strength of them both was as one, 

And the sin of them both as of one. 

For under the floor of their car, 
With its draping of stripe and of star, 
Came the bearers dusky as night, 
Came the bearers haggard and white, 
With the burden too great to bear. 



204 



A VISION OF TO-MORROW. 

For the lissome arm so brown 

With the lash and the chain dropped down 

Heavy as lead ; 
And the gold that the fair Queen grasps 

Had the weight of the sod on the dead ; 
And the bearers they breathed in gasps 

And they reeled in their tread. 

Then a flash hid them all from my sight, 
And it paled; and the Voice said, "Write." 

I saw the crowned Twain, 

But the darker was crownless now, 
And the light had left her brow, 

And gone was her vassal train. 

And the bearers haggard and white 

Brightened with wild delight, 

For the Queen that was fair as the sun, 
In her joy at the victory won, 

Lavished her gifts in their sight. 

And they saw not, unshown, 

That the burden they bore 

Was as great as before 
And they bore it alone. 

Then a cloud hid the scene from my sight, 
And it passed, and the Voice said, "Write." 

And the bearers haggard and pale 
Writhed with the burden they bore, 
And sank in the mire and the sands, 
Lifting imploring hands 

With shriek and desolate wail, 
And their cry was loud in the lands. 



A VISION OF TO-MORROW. 205 

And some cried, " More ! More ! More ! 
Open, O Queen, thy store !" 
(They had drunken her gifts like wine 
In the days that had seemed divine), 
And some were beginning to curse, 
And to cry, "Was the dark Queen worse? 
We have borne this weight from of yore, 
And now we will bear no more." 

And their Queen had a hunted face, 

Haggard and full of fear, 
As the stag when the sounds of chase 

Proclaim that the hounds are near ; 
And she reached for the lash in vain 

That had fallen from the dark Queen's hands, 
And she showered her gifts like rain, 

For the cry was loud in the lands. 
Yet the cry rose more and more, 
" Open, O Queen, thy store !" 

Then a curtain dropped on my sight, 

And it rose; and the Voice said, "Write." 

And the bearers haggard and white 

Were frantic with wild delight, 

For they said, " We shall slay her now 

For the rings that are on her hand 
And the crown that is on her brow." 

And the fair Queen strove to stand, 
And she cast appealing eyes. 
Then I saw the dark Queen rise, 
Scornful and tall and grand, 
Shadowing all the land, 
18* 



2o6 THE CHEYENNE MASSACRE. 

And her lissome arm had the swing 

Of the eagle's rushing wing 

As he swoops with the prey in his grasp, 

And the sting of the deadly asp 

Was the sting of the lash she swayed. 

Aud the bearers moaned, 

And the bearers groaned, 
But they kneeled them down and obeyed. 

So again beneath the car, 
With its draping of stripe and star, 
Came the bearers dusky as night, 
Came the bearers haggard and white, 
With the burden too great to bear. 

For the strength of the Queens was as one, 
And the shame of them both as of one. 

And I asked, " Shall this always be?" 
And the Voice said, " Wait and see." 

1878. 



THE CHEYENNE MASSACRE. 

The devil came up from hell 

In a uniform of blue ; 
For he said, "They are doing well 

The work that I love to do. 
The Bashi Bazouk and Thug 

Are worthy my friends to be ; 
But I long to clasp the hand 

Of a captain of cavalry!" 



THE CHEYENNE MASSACRE. 207 

Out from the land of sorrow 

The Indian exiles fled, 
And their trail through the wide frontier 

Was strewn with their graveless dead : 
Some where the threescore warriors 

Turned at desperate bay ; 
Some where the feeble stragglers 

Had fallen the borderer's prey. 
Babes to their freezing mothers 

Clung in the bitter wind ; 
But still they staggered onward, 

For the war-wolves coursed behind. 
Hail to the blasts of winter ! 

Cheers for the ice and snow ! 
The trooper's worthy allies 

Are Famine and Want and Woe. 

The curtain falls : and rises 

On prisoners gaunt and wild, 
On furious outraged manhood, 

On starving mother and child. 
For the voice of their heartless captor 

Answers their urgent plea, 
" I feed but the mild and docile, 

And such ye have ceased to be." 

They heard in sullen silence, 

Till the fatal midnight came, 
And the voice of taunted nature 

Burst forth like leaping flame. 
Through bar and sash and paling 

They dashed with a frantic rush, 
And the helpless guards reeled backward 

Like twigs in a torrent's gush. 



208 THE CHEYENNE MASSACRE. 

The hapless fathers, bearing 

Their children, led the way, 
Or turned to drive the demons 

Back from their feeble prey. 
For soldiers and men and Christians, — 

God, that such things should be ! — 
Pouring volley on volley, 

Slaughtered remorselessly. 
The voice of our highest culture 

Swelled the devilish cry ; 
And the lessons of lordly Hudson 

Aided the babes to die. 
And as oft as the writhing wounded 

Reared 'his wretched head, 
Some ball-room gallant was ready 

With his ounce of pistol-lead. 

O men of honor and glory, 

Men of trappings and pride, 
You have changed for the worse since the darkness 

Brooded while Jesus died ! 
In the light of his holy teaching, 

Bearing His holier name, 
You have done what the soldiers of Pilate 

Would have shrunk from in burning shame. 

But not in vain has arisen 

The murdered Indian's cry. 
Alike o'er hireling and nation 

A judgment is hovering nigh. 
Not long the master demon 

Of that frightful border den 
Shall shame the blessed sunshine 

And the cheeks of honest men. 



ON CAPITOL HILL. 209 

May Want and black Dishonor 

Stand by his dying bed, 
And the curse of the starved and murdered 

Weigh on his soul like lead ! 
1878. 



ON CAPITOL HILL. 

The angel eyes of heaven 

Looked down from the darkness above ; 
The fiery eyes of the city 

Burned up through the blackness below ; 
And never a trace of the pearly moon 

Nor a hint of the sunrise glow ! 

Arch and portal and pillar 

Towered on the height midway, 

Shapely and tall and stately, 

And wan with a doubtful gleam : 

And the dome that rose above them all 
Was the temple-dome of a dream. 

High aloof, the goddess, 

Throned in the solemn light, 
Half seen, half guessed, held converse 

With the powers of the waste of air ; 
And it seemed that the soul of a mighty land 

Was halting and doubting there. 
1879. 



2io A LEGEND OF THE ALLEGHANIES. 



A LEGEND OF THE ALLEGHANIES. 

Across Cacapon's barren back, 
Beneath the scudding cloudland rack, 

Silent, beside the mountaineer, 
I rode along the rugged track. 

Below us lay the valley bright, 
Far reaching to the left and right, 

Of varying width : a buttressed wall 
Gave mete and bound to forward sight. 

The isles of grass seemed emeralds set 
In some forgotten coronet ; 

And through the midst, a shining band, 
Wound in and out a rivulet. 

Two homes appeared : one, white and far, 
Shone in the sunbeams like a star ; 

The other bore in blackened walls 
The dreadful signature of War. 

And who could fail to understand 
That we were traversing the land 

Of tales that deal with stirring themes 
And vague traditions weird and grand ? 

So, as I rode, my thoughts took range 
With the wild sweep of fancies strange 

In his quaint, marvellous recital, 
Which I repeat with little change. 



A LEGEND OF THE ALLEGHANIES. 2 II 

Long, long ago, — I know not when, — 
There sought these mountains foreign men. 

But whence they came I cannot say, 
Nor whether they returned again. 

Theirs was a speech no mortal knew. 

They dealt with none, — their wants were few, — 

And little of their work was wrought 
Between the sunrise and the dew. 

But often the belated wight 
Saw in the dark their fires alight, 

And, creeping near, could plainly view 
The high-piled ingots clean and bright. 

And, wondrous in their garb and hair, 
With flowing beards and brown arms bare, 

He watched the frantic artisans 
Who toiled and sang in chorus there. 

And at that chorus swelling wide 
Shivered the bridegroom and the bride, 

And infants miles away would cling 
More tightly to the mother's side. 

One day they vanished from the glen 
Which long had been their wizard den, 

And every vestige of their stay 
Had passed at once from mortal ken. 

The ravaged bosom of the hills 
Was clad with grass and bright with rills. 
The blackened woods were green again, 
And musical with wild-bird trills. 



212 A LEGEND OF THE ALLEGHANIES. 

Then, tempted by that wondrous store 
Of gleaming blocks and shapeless ore, 
Strong men assailed the mighty hills 
To wrest by force the prize of lore. 

But bootless were their toil and pains : 
The fruitful mountain's ruddy veins 

And silver ducts those miners weird 
Had drained as never mortal drains. 

But after many a day and year 
A hunter paused that spot anear, 

And, gazing through the evergreens, 
He stood as one in sudden fear. 

For there a tablet he beheld 

Quaint wrought with characters of eld, 

Unholy marks, black, straggling signs. 
He strove and strove, — but nothing spelled. 

He stooped, and seized the door-like stone, 
And wrenched to burst the force unknown 

Which held it clinging to the breast 
Of that strange mountain grim and lone. 

But fruitless was his frantic strain, 
Though the hot sweat-drops fell like rain, 

Until, like one in mortal fear, 
He turned him round and fled amain. 

And never afterward could he 
Again that wondrous tablet see, 

Though far around a zealous band 
Searched mountain-side and greenery. 



A LEGEND OF THE ALLEGHANIES. 213 

Years came and went. A herdsman sought 
His cattle near the self-same spot, 

And came upon the carven stone, 
And seized and strove — and conquered not. 

But one who would not conquered'be, 
Himself a son of sorcery, 

Had sworn to try the Obi skill 
Of sunbrown lands beyond the sea. 

He found the tablet when the glare 
Of lightning filled the outer air, 

And through the rifted pines the wind 
Went by with voices of despair. 

What magic broke the stubborn spell 
I know not, — only this befell : 

The stone from off the nether chasm 
Rose like a curb-lid from a well. 

He clutched it by the tilting side, 
And peered with eyeballs staring wide ; 

But never mortal man could learn 
What that brief scrutiny descried. 

The mountain shook with sudden throes; 
From glen and cavern groans arose, 

And, headlong hurled through brake and brier, 
He felt the strokes of viewless foes. 

And so our mountains yield to-day 
Nor gold nor silver, though they say 
That still the treasure hidden lies, 
And one dark ghost could point the way. 
1879. 

THE END. 



